Validating Teachers’ Competence for Personal Learning Environments

A Delphi Study

Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh (Presenter)Dr. Shakeel Ahmed Khoja

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To Be Discussed• What is Learning?• What is Personal Learning?• What are Personal Learning Environments?• Teachers’ Role in PLE Design• Teachers’ Competencies for PLEs• What is Delphi Study?• This Study• Results • Discussion• Conclusions• Recommendations

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“Man is by nature a social animal...Society is something that precedes the individual.”

(Aristotle)

Social construction of knowledge epistemology holds that we human beings create knowledge and ascribe meaning and definitions to terms and concepts; that our epistemologies originate with us and within us and not outside of or beyond us.

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The acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, practice, or study, or by being taught.

• Formal learning has been linear.– School knowledge is pre-determined by a centralized authority,

and delivered in a linear format to a mass audience.

• Informal learning has been non-linear (network). Our brains learn non-linearly (links & nodes).

• Fortunately, we are in the age of Networked Learning.

• But, beware, informal learning is unguided, with no particular end in mind.

What is Learning?

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What is Personal Learning?

Learning that is for any personal interest or

hobby

From totally unguided, with no particular end in mind to totally focused with very

particular goal in mind

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What are Personal Learning Environment?1. From linear learning to interactive learning hypermedia2. From instruction to the construction of knowledge

discovery3. Learning focused on the learner. The teacher as the

facilitator4. Learning how to learn, think critically and navigate5. Learning bored by inactivity to learning fun and

challenging6. Of learning by interacting only with materials, to learn

by interacting others7. PLE recognizes individual’s role in organizing his learning8. PLE extends access to educational technology to

everyone 9. PLE includes and brings together all learning10.PLE facilitates sharing of learning artifacts11.PLE supports networks of people, content, and services12.The argument for the use of PLEs is not technical but

rather is philosophical, ethical and pedagogic

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PLE

“A personalized environment that is constructed for learning purposes.”

“Systems for enabling self-directed and group-based learning, designed around each user’s goals, with great capacity for flexibility and

customization.”

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Fitting PLE Concept with Learning Process

• Are learners familiar with PLE conception?

• Do learners know how to develop a PLE to get benefitted in formal and informal learning settings?

• Do they need scaffolding that enable them to exploit PLE for social interaction, global participation, peer review, and content management?

• How to use PLE conception to make them lifelong learners? Because no one can depend of a teacher in the whole life.

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Teachers’ Role in PLE Design

• Teachers are asked to help learners (specially millennials) to develop a PLE for them.

• Teachers should equip themselves for personalized learning scaffolding.

• Question: are teachers capable and ready to provide PLE scaffolding to learners?

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Teachers’ Competencies for PLEs• Teachers don’t know enough about PLEs, personalization, and

personalized learning scaffolding (Leadbeater, 2010).

• They don’t know about their roles and competencies for PLE process (Väljataga & Laanpere, 2010).

• Only, recently, the literature has been providing some rigorous discussions on this topic (Downes, 2011; Shaikh & Khoja, 2012).

• This study intends to explore and validate teachers’ competencies and readiness for PLE process.

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This Study

• Questions

– What changes in teachers’ traditional competencies are required due to the induction of PLE conception in students’ learning processes and changes in pedagogy, which favor a more constructivist and less teacher-centric approach?

– Which skills and knowledge are necessary for teachers to provide proper PLE guidance to their students?

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Delphi Study• A collaborative problem-solving method which is used to solve

emergent problems without holding face-to-face meetings.

• Types of Delphi studies: – Classical Delphi: for establishing facts from vague concepts– Policy-Delphi : for generating ideas from any new phenomenon– Decision-making Delphi: getting concrete results to make better decisions

• Delphi’s distinction: – liberty of selecting a small number of experts, multiple round probe,

individual reporting to each participant, avoids the drawbacks of face-to-face debates, respects minority views, etc.

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Why Delphi?

• The phenomenon teachers’ capabilities and readiness for PLE process is new to higher education people.

• Requires community contribution for establishing facts in order to make better future decisions.

• The opinion of domain experts encourages wider level debates and provides future research agendas.

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Method

• 34 international PLE experts participated. – teachers, researchers, designers, and practitioners

• Extensive literature review of papers published between 2006 – 2012.

• Questionnaire containing a 60-item teachers skills list for PLE process was designed.

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Data Analysis

• Agreement/acceptance measurement (5-1 likert-type scale)

• Consensus measurement - High consensus, moderate consensus, low consensus (0 to -2 biased weights).

• Desirability measurement for important skills (1-0 weights) • • To determine whether to accept the competency or not,

weights of 1st two columns were summed to final status column (5-1 likert-type weights)

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Results

• Results show that the participants achieved an overall consensus on statements.

• The consensus developing process shows moderate-to-high convergence (IQR<=1.0).

• The statements that gained strongly accept or accept statuses are considered the results of this Delphi.

• Delphi Participants reviewed the competency list and reduced it to 54 skills in three rounds (Table 2).

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1.Defining participatory, social, and supportive learning processes. 2.Designing personalized, collaborative, & peer learning activities.3.Guiding students setting a PLE for themselves. 4.Designing courses that emphasize a high degree of trust in

students’ ability to self-manage learning.5.Harnessing resources that exist outside the formal spaces.6.Designing environments that offer dynamic perspectives to

incorporate pedagogical scaffolds. 7.Adapting curriculum to include learner-focused forms of

feedback and assessment.8.Developing facilitated online community of inquiry. 9.Defining instructional design procedures that enable learner-

driven participation in developing learning processes.

Planning & Design Competence

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Instruction & Learning Competence/11. Embracing learner-centred and provider-driven approach to

instruction.2. Fostering self-actualized skills of learners.3. Knowing collaborative, connective, active, constructive,

reflective, and authentic aspects of learning.4. Managing non-formal and informal learning spaces.5. Providing adaptable and flexible learner and task scaffolding.6. Using tools to create authentic assessment, discourse analysis,

rubrics, etc.7. Determining applicability, relevance, and accuracy of

information sources.8. Understanding how humans learn, assimilate information, and

use knowledge.

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Instruction & Learning Competence/2

9. Knowing PLE conception, teaching methods, teaching and communication styles, etc.

10. Promoting development of learner autonomy and effectiveness.

11. Critically reflecting aspects of teaching and academic work .12. Diagnosing misconceptions about learning, concepts, etc.13. Enabling learners to become co-producers of learning

resources.14. Mixing presentation methods in effective and efficient manner.15. Correctly identifying present and future understandings and

needs of students. 16. Understanding cognitive aspects of instruction and learning.

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Communication & Interaction Competence/1

1. Empowering learners to actively define their own learning trajectories.

2. Encouraging peer learning, social links, and participation.3. Promoting teamwork among learners.4. Engaging students in the processes of inquiry together as a

cohort, etc.5. Building learners’ confidence and communication skills.6. Creating personally meaningful and authentic learning

opportunities. 7. Recognizing learners’ forms of skills and knowledge.

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Communication & Interaction Competence/2

8. Achieving personalization through dialogue-based negotiation process.

9. Understanding, acknowledging, and reinforcing learners’ contributions.

10. Analysing patterns of cooperation among students and teachers.

11. Helping students understand their learning style.12. Identifying areas of consensus for improving learners’

performance.13. Prompting and controlling discussions.

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Management & Administration Competence

1. Managing within and outside classrooms environments.2. Promoting accessibility for learners.3. Providing learning guidance, feedback, and advice to

students.4. Enabling self-direction, knowledge building and autonomy of

students.5. Assessing efficacy of learning processes and learning

services.6. Performing front-end analysis by comparing actual and ideal

performance levels in workplace.7. Ensuring learners are capable of making informed

educational decisions.

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Use of Technology Competence

1. Facilitate learners to become prosumers of knowledge.2. Help learners adapt to the changes brought on by Web 2.0

technologies.3. Support applications of learning, learning communities, and

networks.4. Facilitate information presentation.5. Facilitating learners in sharing/managing online file areas, etc6. Creating online interactive content.7. Capitalizing learners’ interests and digital competencies.8. Solving learners' programming problems.9. Providing traditional and virtual learning environment uses of

applications for web-based learning.

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Conclusions

• Teachers need not to master in all 54 competencies suggested.

• At least some familiarity and understanding of these competencies is necessary for them to prove they are capable.

• Teachers should excel in 36 strongly accepted competencies.

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Recommendations

• Teachers’ familiarity and awareness with suggested competencies should be given importance at the time of staffing and training of teachers, and curriculum development.

• Qualitative studies may be conducted that augment in depth the competency statements of this study.

• University administrators may use the results of this study in developing strategies that intend to integrate traditional learning approaches with personalized learning processes.

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References/1• Aragon, R. and Johnson, D. (2002): Emerging roles and competencies for training in e-learning

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• Attwell, G. (2007). The personal learning environments - the future of eLearning? eLearning Papers, 2(1), http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media11561.pdf

• Attwell, G. (2012): Reflections on Personal Learning Environments. Video Interview, http://www.pontydysgu.org/2012/01/reflections-on-personal-learning-environments/

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• Chatti, M. A. (2010): LMS vs. PLE. Mohamed Amine Chatti's ongoing research on Knowledge and Learning http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/2010/03/lms-vs-ple.html

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• Downes, S. (2010): The role of educator in a PLE world, Stephenʼs web, http://www.downes.ca/post/54312

• Drexler, W. (2010): The Networked Student Model for Construction of Personal Learning Environments: Balancing Teacher Control and Student Autonomy. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 26, No. 3, pp 369-385.

• EIFEL. (2006): The Teacher/Trainer eLearning Competency Framework Skills check, http://www.eife-l.org/competencies/ttskillscheck

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• Guasch, T., Alvarez, I., Espasa, A. (2010): University teacher competencies in a virtual teaching/learning environment: Analysis of a teacher training experience. Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 26, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 199-206

• Häkkinen, P., and Hämäläinen, R. (2011): Shared and personal learning spaces: Challenges for pedagogical design, Internet and Higher Education (2011).

• Harmelen, M.V. (2006): Personal Learning Environments. In Kinshuk, Koper, R., Kommers, P., Kirshner, P. Sampson, D. and Didderen, W. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06), Kerkrade, Netherlands: IEEE, http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ICALT.2006.263

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Thank you