Aligning the Affordances of 21st Century Technology with 21st Century Pedagogy: A vision for the future of e-Learning

in Ontario Introduction Technology in general has an important role to play in the Ministry of Educations goal to reach every student. With the admirable goal of ensuring that teachers and administrators can employ technology to improve student achievement, close the gap and improve public confidence in publicly funded education, skillful and innovative use of technology is more important than ever. In particular, e-Learning and blended learning currently play an central role in supporting student success in Ontario, and that role will continue to grow given the Ministrys goal to make blended learning available for all Ontario students from kindergarten to grade 12. i The growth of technology provides todays young people with learning opportunities that just fifteen years ago would have seemed hard to imagine. The Internet is no longer a place where individuals go to retrieve information, but to create multimedia and publish to a world-wide audience. Todays youth are members of what American media scholar Henry Jenkins calls participatory culture, a culture with low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing ones creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.ii While access to technology, to varying degrees, is ubiquitous in todays schools, access to, and use of technology alone are not enough to achieve the Ministrys goals. We need to align the affordances of 21st century technology with 21st century pedagogy. Current State of E-Learning in Ontario Current growth strategies for e-Learning and blended learning in Ontario include encouraging teachers to integrate blended learning into their teaching more often and providing sustained support for teachers through a variety of local and system supports while helping administrators see the connections to other Ministry initiatives. E-Learning and blended learning offer students and teachers more choice. Teachers have another tool at their disposal differentiate by content, process, and product. As stated in the OPSBAs A Vision for Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age e-Learning and blended learning support self-directed and selfpaced learning as students take full advantage of anytime, anywhere learning that can happen beyond the walls of the school.iii Untapped Potential The provincial learning management system has a wealth of potential. The ePortfolio tool, for example, allows students to showcase and reflect metacognitively on learning artifacts theyve created throughout a course,

demonstrating their growth over time. This is a powerful tool that many teachers are just now becoming familiar with. On the other hand, the provincial LMS still functions primarily as a content delivery tool rather than a digital learning environment where students create as well as consume rich multimedia material, which is not reflective of the web 2.0 world they participate in every day. The content in the LMS is very text-heavy, relying primarily on reading and writing which is not as inclusive as it could be, both in terms of supporting students with disabilities but also in terms of supporting a variety of learning styles. Richard Mayers 2008 paper Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction applies cognitive science to multimedia learning. Among several instructional design principles he discusses are the coherence principle and the modality principle.iv The coherence principle states that good instructional design includes words and pictures, but reduces the amount of decorative and representative graphics, thus reducing the cognitive load placed on the brain. Visuals that exist within the LMS are primarily there as decoration. While the intent is to make the material more engaging, the end result may actually be detrimental to student learning. The modality principle states that people learn better from words and pictures when words are spoken rather than printed, as this reduces demands on visual processing. If we truly want students to be authentically engaged, we need to provide them with material that respects the way they learn. Seeing the Possibilities We need to take advantage of the affordances of the provincial LMS to authentically engage students. This will require aligning multimedia rich content with pedagogy centered around scaffolded instruction and 21st century skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. This will happen through a two-pronged approach. First, we must rework the existing content in the LMS and OERB to reflect principles of multimedia learning and effective instructional design. While acknowledging the fact that some students have limited access to high-speed internet, we can still use multimedia to provide more choice to our students in terms of how they engage with and create content. This is not only more engaging for students but helps provide more inclusivity by respecting different learning styles and ability levels. This would also include revising the rubrics using student-friendly language to make learning goals and success criteria clearer for students. Second, we must rework instructional approaches to include a gradual release of responsibility framework of instructional strategies that take advantage of a full range of online learning tools. Screen-capture software and document cameras make it easier than ever for teachers to model learning for their students. While collaboration does happen to a certain extent, we need to make it easier for students

in the e-Learning environment to learn from and with their peers. Discussion forums do not adequately reflect the organic nature of small group discussions that happen in face-to-face classrooms. Yet the technology exists to make these face-toface discussions possible. How will this vision be implemented? Luckily we already have a wealth of innovative e-Learning and blended learning teachers in Ontario who are finding ways to authentically engage students in exciting ways. We need to draw on the knowledge of e-Learning contacts and district e-Learning Coordinators to identify these teachers and bring them together to discuss challenges and best-practices in e-Learning. Then we survey teachers to find out how to make the LMS content more engaging. Next, we establish a set of norms for content design based on the principles of multimedia learning that are easy for teachers to implement. At the same time, we need to enlist teacher support to revise the LMS content to better reflect the gradual release of responsibility, incorporation of learning goals and success criteria in student-friendly language, and instructional strategies that foster critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. In order to maximize results, it would be wise to begin by revising courses that have the highest attrition rates. Once we compare current attrition rates to attrition rates after the revisions have been implemented, we can measure how these revisions support the ministrys goal of reaching every student, and can apply what weve learned to the remaining content in the LMS, starting with the most popular courses in e-Learning and blended learning. Finally, in addition to revising content, we must develop training for teachers of eLearning and blended learning, recognizing that we cannot simply apply traditional methods of teaching and learning to the digital environment and expect our students and teachers to be successful. Here too, we can draw on the expertise of our e-Learning and blended teachers to help develop teaching and assessment strategies that e-Learning contacts, and coordinators can use to support the teachers within their own boards.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2012, Sept 14). Blended learning. Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/elearning/blend.html
i

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. The MIT Press.
ii

OPSBA. (2013). A vision for teaching and learning in a digital age. Retrieved from http://www.opsba.org/files/OPSBA_AVisionForLearning.pdf
iii

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist, 63(8), 760-769. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.63.8.760
iv