My Context - Challenges & Opportunities

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my context, my challenges, and opportunities. I am Krys Paszkiewicz a student and facilitator at Torrens University Australia. I will discuss my Professional Identity and cover my aims and what is important to me. In discussing my Professional Identity as a facilitator, I cannot bypass the learning theories which underpin my professional practice.

I have also discovered several key challenges and will focus on one which impacts many of my learners. After setting the scene, I would like to propose a few solutions which will need to be tested before I find the ONE!

Professional Identity

Throughout this class, I have considered my Professional Identity, and after some thought have decided that I am a Learning Consultant (Paszkiewicz, 2020), with facilitation and leadership underpinning my Professional and Personal identities. My Professional Identity is compartmentalised, (Barker Caza & Creary, 2016; Haamer, Lepp & Reva, 2012; Paszkiewicz, 2020) and is very much dependent on my environment. I am a facilitator in Global Project Management, and my Project Management experience is very much a part of my identity, especially when I am facilitating. But I am also a facilitator, leading learners through their learning journey. Experimentation and re-creation of professional identities, based on current context (Haamer, Lepp, & Reva, 2012; Paszkiewicz, 2020) is key to my Professional Identity, and I am unsure that I will remain with one single identity either professionally or personally.

I am a Project Management Professional, who has built on extensive experience in Organisational Change Management, and Organisational and IT Training and Development over many years, to move back into a teaching and learning role within an Academic context. I have previously worked within State and Local Government as well as in Corporate environments. But I am also a leader, professionally and personally, mentoring, and leading younger leaders in their leadership and learning journeys.

What are my aims?

My professional aims are to help and lead my learners through their learning journey within my classes and in this way to assist them in developing the skills that they require to find their way within the Project Management environment. Leadership is far more effective if it is executed from within the team. Thus, my facilitation and leadership, develop skills and learning within the learner group but also promote leadership within the learning community. One of my key aims is to engage the learners with Project Management Professionals and in this way move them further towards Constructivism in their learning approach. (Valenzuela, 2020; Paszkiewicz, 2020).

I also aim to carry out my practice to the best of my ability and to continue to learn how to improve and provide a more effective and exciting learning experience for my learners. Having experience as a Project Manager in additional to Organisational Change Management and Organisational Development, my learning and teaching practice encompasses far more than teaching. Mentoring, guiding, and leading underpin my facilitation approach, and these are now based on teaching and learning theories which I have begun to understand.

What is important

I have a strong belief that learners must want to learn and need to know how to learn if learning is to be effective. Supported by Knowles Andragogical teaching strategy, the assumptions of readiness to learn, orientation to learning and motivation to learning, support my beliefs. (Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2015). My learners are not just students, they are important and intelligent adults who are following my guidance, and whom I am leading through the maze of information that they are striving to learn and understand.

I hold myself to a high standard and have a similar expectation of others. I find it difficult to accept or understand cheating or learners who passively expect to be taught. My objective for these learners is that they learn and as a result become an active asset for their future employer and themselves. I want these learners to represent the Project Management community with dignity and uphold the ethics of the Project Management community (Project Management Institute (2020). I am also passionate about the reputation of Torrens, as our degrees are worth nothing if the institution from which we have gained them, is not considered reputable.

What theories underpin my practice

An understanding of Bloom’s Taxonomy ensures that I design learning activities which are aligned to the Subject Learning Outcomes (SLO) and assessment tasks and allow the learners to construct meaning from relevant learning activities. (Biggs, n.d.) These activities also need to develop higher-level thinking, not only because the subject learning outcome requires this, but also to prepare learners for the future beyond this subject and this degree. Learners will build upon their prior knowledge via relevant and challenging activities. Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget based their early learning theories on Cognitivism, in which the mind is considered to be an information processor (Siemens, 2008) but also moved towards Constructivism, which is focused on self-directed learning, in which the learner constructs knowledge actively, and bases this on prior knowledge and current discoveries (Ertmer & Newby, 2013). Reflections on learning and experiences allow further learning to be constructed by the learner.

Lev Vygotsky identified the notion of Social Constructivism, (Verenikina, 2003) in which the social nature of learning in a collaborative environment has been demonstrated. These experiences are open-ended and require active interaction of all learners within the learning process. Key to Vygotsky’s theories is the Zone of Proximal Development and the understanding that the learner can learn from other learners, or peers and not just from the facilitator or teacher. (Verenikina, 2003)

At a postgraduate level, engagement of higher-order cognitive skills is essential and while a Heutagogical method (Hase, 2014), based on the Connectivist theory of self-determined learning is possibly unachievable at least within two of my classes, ensuring a student-centred approach (Hase, 2014), and ensuring Constructive Alignment (Biggs, 1996.), will assist learners in achieving the class outcomes. The use of role-plays and case studies within the class is based on Authentic Learning or real-life learning in which the facilitator is the guide while the learners collaborate to produce a meaningful outcome and solution. (Revington, 2016; Lombardi, & Oblinger, (2007)

My practice, therefore, is based on providing an authentic learning environment in which learners explore and collaboratively arrive at solutions to open-ended problems, which may be set via a case study, or a scenario. A reflection at the beginning of each class allows a review of previous learning and sets the scene for the current learning. We engage in peer review of discussions, in which learners provide constructive and supportive feedback regarding presentations and in-class as well as on-line discussions.

Challenge

I facilitate three virtual online classes, classes which up until Covid-19, were face to face. In a face to face environment, learners who attended were physically present in the class. That is not to say that they actively participated, but they participated in assessment tasks and were engaged in small group discussion activities, which occurred in most classes. Many learners, however, did not prepare for classes, and so if there was a mini case study for discussion, learners read the case study instead of actively participating in the discussion within their groups.

In my first Critical Reflection, I identified that my expectations of learner commitment to learning may be unrealistic and that I may need to temper this, in acknowledgement of the knowledge that these learners have not learned how to learn (Paszkiewicz 2020). However, if my role is to facilitate and lead these learners through the path and along the journey, and therefore achieve the TUA Academic Framework recommendation of developing a Community of Learning, I need to lead the learners through the development of learning strategies and metacognitive skills (Paszkiewicz, 2020)

I have flipped the classrooms and asked learners to prepare ahead of time, so that we are able to carry out interesting activities within the class, based on the preparations before class. As with the mini case studies in face-to-face classes, learners are often unprepared, and thus small group discussions fail due to lack of physical presence. So, I introduced activities using Mentimeter and Jamboard, which the learners appear to have enjoyed. Where learners have not read ahead or prepared for the class, the discussion and knowledge building activities allow them to participate by adding to the work of the entire class, even if they make a guess, or they add on the basis of other knowledge.

The level of participation, however, is less than 50%. In a class of 35, some 30 will usually be logged in to Collaborate. When we move to Jamboard or Mentimeter, up to 15 will log into these applications and of these, some 10 will post onto the Jamboard or participate in the Mentimeter activities. Most of the remainder do not post in the Collaborate chat, even though this is an option which is offered (and I then post on their behalf onto Jamboard)

Several learners log on at the beginning and then do not participate at all in the class activities even when specifically asked to set a status via Collaborate. When we have completed the class activities early, these learners have remained online until the scheduled time for class completion.

My second challenge follows from the first challenge of lack of participation. This is the challenge of low grades and high incidence of Academic Integrity (TEQSA. n.d.) breaches experienced in two of the three classes. The learners who have not achieved a pass grade are those who have not participated, and many of these learners have had Academic Integrity breaches proven. I have supported my theory by comparing attendance, and participation with actual grades achieved and AI findings, in both face to face and online classes for several trimesters.

This trimester I applied an intervention and will repeat this intervention next trimester to place a greater focus on ensuring that learners are comfortable with the required outcomes of assessment tasks.

However, I believe the root cause is the passive learning and lack of active participation. Having spoken to a few students, I understand that the education system in several countries is far different to that in Australia, and passive learning is the form of learning in these countries, even at graduate levels.

My challenge therefore is to increase the active participation of learners in the online classes, even though we are in a virtual online learning environment.

Range of solutions

I have a number of solutions to consider:

The first solution is to flip the class back to the lecture format – this was requested by learners in a feedback session this week, however, the overwhelming majority asked that the flipped approach remain, even though it requires them to prepare for class. This solution does not allow for any participation, and learners will not be given an opportunity to participate in class activities, therefore I would not be providing the learning environment that is desired by the majority.

A second solution is to devote the first class to teaching learners how we will learn in this class. Within the introduction to the subject and my expectations of learners, I also ask learners to introduce themselves and their expectations of the learning experience. I have noticed that a few learners at the beginning stated that they expected me to teach them what they needed to know. I must note that these learners did not prepare their own presentations, as the language was not theirs, so this was also potentially an Academic Integrity breach. This is an opportunity to reverse the expectation of passive learning and demonstrate via several activities, that the learning needs to occur within the learner and will only occur with active participation in learning.

Using Dr Gilly Salmon’s Five Stage Model of Online Teaching and Learning, (Salmon, 2017) I will need to build the engagement level more efficiently and ensure the Online Socialisation and Information Exchange is embedded to build online Knowledge Construction. The Community of Inquiry (CoI, n.d.; Swan, Garrison, & Richardson, 2009), requires Cognitive and Social presence as well as teaching presence, but enabling student presence through more activities which are deemed to be part of assessment tasks, may provide further encouragement to participate actively.

The final solution is to regularly engage learners in more active peer assessment and sample assessment reviews, in an attempt to align the learning with the needs of the learners and directed to the assessments and learning to learn. (Biggs, 1996). With learners seeing an alignment between the learning activities and the assessments, they may become more motivated and interested in active participation, and therefore the level of active learning may increase.

The final solution may be a combination of a number of the proposed solutions.

Thank you for your time, and I would love to hear of other solutions, especially if you have encountered similar challenges.

References

Barker Caza, B., & Creary, S. (2016). The construction of professional identity. Perspectives on Contemporary Professional Work, 259–285. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783475582.00022

Berkeley University of California Centre for Teaching and Learning, (2016). What is Learning? Available: http://teaching.berkeley.edu/resources/learn/what-learning

Biggs, J. (1996). Aligning Teaching for Constructing Learning. Journal of Higher Education, 32, 347–364. Retrieved from https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci747s2c/lectures/teaching-through-constructive-alignment.pdf

CoI, The Community of Inquiry(n.d.) The Community of Inquiry. Retrieved 15 August 2020 from: https://coi.athabascau.ca/

Educational Technology and Mobile Learning (2015, March 6) Available: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2015/03/andragogy-visually-explained-for-teachers.html (accessed August 2020).

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71. Retrieved from https://lidtfoundations.pressbooks.com/chapter/behaviorism-cognitivism-constructivism/

Haamer, A., Lepp, L., & Reva, E. (2012). The dynamics of professional identity of university teachers: reflecting on the ideal university teacher. Studies for the Learning Society, 2(2–3), 110–120. https://doi.org/10.2478/v10240-012-0010-5

Hase, S. (2014). Heutagogy. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk5RYsZxwOM (accessed June 2020)

Lombardi, B. M. M., & Oblinger, D. G. (2007). Authentic Learning for the 21st Century : An Overview. Learning, 1(March), 1–7. Retrieved from http://alicechristie.org/classes/530/EduCause.pdf

Project Management Institute (2020), Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct, available from https://www.pmi.org/about/ethics/code

Revington, S (2016), Defining Authentic Learning, available from http://authenticlearning.weebly.com/ (accessed 15 August 2020)

Salmon, G. (2017), Higher Education 1.0 to 3.0 and Beyond, retrieved from https://www.gillysalmon.com/blog/higher-education-3-0-and-beyond (Accessed June 2020)

Swan, K., Garrison, D. R. & Richardson, J. C. (2009). A constructivist approach to online learning: the Community of Inquiry framework. In Payne, C. R. (Ed.) Information Technology and Constructivism in Higher Education: Progressive Learning Frameworks. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 43-57. Available: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0953/6f809fae9debdebb337f840b02d12ea0b2cc.pdf (accessed April 2017).

TEQSA (n.d.) Academic Integrity available from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/academic-integrity

Torrens University Australia (2020), Academic Framework 2020, retrieved from https://www.torrens.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2020/05/Academic_Framework_2020.pdf)