Authors: FLEXIBLE LEARNING IN A LMS APPROACH NEW OPENINGS AND PARADIGM

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1 Learning Communication Skills through Non-verbal Interactions and Process Analysis A None-traditional ICT related Teaching Approach for Teaching Education Authors: Gunnar Andersson, Østfold University College, Faculty of Engineering, N-1705, Sarpsborg, Norway gunnar.andersson@hiof.no Sissel Larsen, Østfold University College, Faculty of Education, N-1783, Halden, Norway sissel.larsen@hiof.no Wu Hong, Østfold University College, Faculty of Engineering, N-1705, Sarpsborg, Norway hong.wu@hiof.no Abstract Communication is an essential skill of leadership in practice, regardless profession. The topic is therefore often defined as one important chapter for most organizational and management courses. There are, however, many pedagogical approaches for teaching this topic, depending on individual course objectives and targeted student groups. This paper exemplifies a case of teaching communication topic for education students at Østfold University College, and illustrates a none-traditional ICT related teaching approach for teaching education. There are two major aspects are presenting for this paper: 1) Exercising and learning communication skills through an acting and reacting play as a none-traditional teaching approach; 2) Using Learning Management System (LMS) to restore the course documents, including students work assignments, and generate a virtual classroom for on campus and remote students. For aspect 1), the students have learned their communication skills through a situation based acting play, taken up by a short sequence of a video clip. They have observed and analyzed their communication process during the video session, included their non-verbal and interactions. They also needed to conduct their analysis and process reflection as a part of their written assignments. In a way, their pedagogical approach is not only reading and writing based, but also acting and reacting based. For aspect 2), the students have received a short LMS introduction session at the course beginning, so they can use this LMS application for course conducting. All the course materials, including students analysis reports and video clips are restored at, and can be retrieved from the course s LMS. This LMS solution was a convenient alternative for over 1/3 of students, whom are considered as a remote student category, as their accesses for face-to-face lecture hours are limited. As a result, the current course evaluation and updated activity analysis shows beneficial outcomes of none-traditional teaching methods and their good learning effects. The current case has also exemplified the benevolence of developing innovative teaching methods to attract students, especially remote students, and improving quality of teaching. Last, but not least, the benefits of establishing a cross-sectional cooperation between discipline of engineering and discipline of education. Index Terms acting and reacting play, communication skill, none-traditional teaching approach, Learning Management System (LMS), remote students FLEXIBLE LEARNING IN A LMS APPROACH NEW OPENINGS AND PARADIGM Using a Learning Management System (LMS) for supporting a course teaching is very common nowadays, though the practical approaches and methods might be different. The traditional ICT related teaching and learning are usually and mostly document focused, as a traditional LMS works as an information center to restore the documents and written information from instructors and students. The communication activities and interactions are therefore much written or verbal related and this approach might create a challenge for non-verbal interactions and process, though the latter is an important method and aspect for professional teaching study. Previous research findings and observation has also pointed the importance and necessity of incorporation between online interaction creating and online pedagogy [2]. The current study exemplifies a case of teaching communication topic for education students at Østfold University College, and illustrates a none-traditional ICT related teaching approach for teaching education. The course itself is a traditional course related to the organizational topics, named as Communication, leadership and interactions, and it was designed for teaching students, including other related professions. The online part of this course is designed for regional remote students, which are approximately 1/3 of entire class. However, the non-tradition part of this course will be exercising and practicing on communication and interaction skills for students. This will be undertaken and practiced by the stage and acting play with process analysis to follow with, then distribute and restore online. 1

2 The organization of course The organization of course has emphasized on the combination of face-to-face teaching lectures, individual study (including literature review and assignments), project based teamwork and self-conducted studies. The student participation of lecturing and assignments is an essential element of the lecture content, plan and exam evaluations. The project teamwork is usually defined by students themselves for cases. However, the topics are required to be relevant for both theories taught and the practice experienced. Mentoring and tutoring have been the important part of the study. Every student has to contribute his/her efforts to the project teamwork, in variable forms, such as video clip, written documents (reports and assignments) and oral presentation. Such organizing structure provides a good learning pattern for students, since the case studies help students to understand the theories better, combined by online communication with their teachers as back-up [4]. The exemplified project teamwork can be: Teaching communication and interactions through stage and acting play Basically, this assignment will be worked by students themselves. Every group has to present at the least one case. The topic and content will be focused on a situation description and this case will reflect or be picked up from students real daily life, or at the least for the theories included in syllabus. Aside of these mentioned, the groups have no limitation to find or define their cases, as long as there are great interests to work this case among the group s students. The students will also receive the mentoring and tutoring during their case presentation and description. The essential framework and criteria for case are mentioned as: A background description on the persons or actors in the case (their positions and roles in acting) A situation description that includes circumstances, where and when this happened Topic: Related to the syllabus or theories, for example, different expresses or signals on lack of communication? Conflict: What is a conflict? Wherever more than two persons at the same place, there must be a potential for different or contra-dictionary wishes A single person s position and role will always motivate his/her actions Working process and methods The case related stage and acting play shall normally not exceed 10 minutes for each session. Everyone in a group must participate and engage in the acting play. This means everyone in a group must act as a person during a communicative and interactive situation. Everyone shall observe and contribute his/her own acting to make situation changing toward the wished direction. For multi-aspects learning effects, it is expected that every group member will act differently and play as vary actors/roles in such a communicative situation. The intention and expectation of such exercise are: How to build up a personality or role model suitable for tutoring the essential skills on communication and interactions? The intention of the stage and acting play is not necessarily for students to solving the misunderstanding or conflict, but demonstrate and understand the happening of such a situation Constructive and cooperative communicating/supervising toward an individual client, a customer or a colleague can be used as an analysis object/case for other group/students It is also interesting to work with an opponent group so that the interaction process can be demonstrated alive, especially when a everything went wrong case was occurred and discussed Video session for acting play record Every group needs to make a video session in 3-5 minutes to record an acting play where the main focus is the particular skills related with relevant chapter theories. The students will analyze what was happened in this video session, and relevance this will cope with chapter theories and assumptions. They will also summarize their analysis for other students, during the class presentations or seminars. Then their opponent group will make the same analysis (but might be same or different views or conclusions) before an open class debate to follow. The whole process will take approximately 30 minutes. Technology application and media based learning approaches new openings and paradigm According to the experience mentioned above, the pedagogical approaches and information, as well as its handling for such teaching course have the following characteristics: It is topic and case focused, but curriculum based reading It deals with pictures, situations and non-verbal communication with short and repeated video sessions It consists of a number of written documents, mainly analysis reports and evaluations as the basic corn for the final exam 2

3 It opens and needs changing options during the process (video sessions) and interactions (the opponent group s analysis) Such technology application and media based learning approaches provide therefore a new paradigm for LMS using practice: The use of technology will focus on the flexibility and availability for information gathering and processing. The current study has used standard LMS (Blackboard BB) to handle the documents and video streaming to handle the video sessions. The latter provides the possibility to download the short video sessions for ordinary online users, even they only have ISDN/modem access to the internet. In a way, this can be considered as a web based learning laboratory [6], applied in this particular course. THE NEED OF FLEXIBILITY FOR LEARNERS EXPERIENCES AND EVALUATIONS It is important to establish efficient communication links with learners and receive their feedback quickly and frequently. The current course has focused on experiences and observations of learners, and designed a set of survey based course evaluations to follow the course period. The standard questionnaires were deployed and sent to the learners, the course students, and collected back to the course instructors. There have been conducted 4 such midterm evaluations and their outcomes are summarized in table 1. The full class is accounted as 30 students and there are both full-time and part-time students in the class. For data collections, the responding rates have been varied from time to time. Upon the 1 st survey in October 2004, there were 10 fulltime students and 13 part-time students responded the survey. Questions\Evaluation October 2004 (N=23) December 2004 (N=6) January 2005 (N=21) April 2005 (N=10) Multi-choice answers I read/work mostly at My home My workplace During the gathering Other places 87.0% 0% 69.6% 17.4% 100.0% 16.7% 83.3% 0% 95.0% 9.5% 71.4% 4.8% 100.0% 10.0% 90.0% 20.0% Multi-choice answers I read/work mostly on Ordinary working hours 39.1% 66.7% 33.3% 20.0% Evening 69.6% 83.3% 81.0% 90.0% Weekend 47.8% 100.0% 61.9% 90.0% During gathering 47.8% 66.7% 61.9% 80.0% Single-choice answers I put my efforts in 1-10 to read/work with lecture (1=poorest, 10=best) Single-choice answers My expectation reached in 1-10 with course (1=poorest, 10=best) 5.8 average (N=22) Ranking from 3 to average Ranking 3 to average Ranking from 4 to average Ranking 3 to 8 TABLE 1 A SURVEY SUMMARY ON COURSE EVALUATIONS THROUGHOUT COURSE PERIOD 6.0 average Ranking from 3 to average Ranking 2 to average Ranking from 5 to Ranking 2 to 9 Most questions were related with learning situations of learners, thus, where and when are they reading and working for their lectures. Though the survey outcomes seem to be varied over the course period, there are few potential elements can be noticed from the table: A great number of students work mostly t home and very few work at workplace Gathering seems to be an important event, also as working place and available time for working with lectures Other places such as libraries seem not to be the most common place for working with lectures Students tend to work gradually more and more in evening or weekend, and less in ordinary working hours Students tend to make greater and greater efforts for their lecture work Stduents expectations to the course were best at starting, but down gradually until the last evaluation As a conclusion, the notation above indicates the general activities of students, whom consist of full-time and parttime, and their needs of flexibility. Working at home becomes a common pattern for most students, even there is a significant part of full-time students. There might be few reasons, but more self-conducted study and self-organized study approach seems to be one common pattern for many. Working at home provides such flexibility and self-organizing. This is also confirmed by students answer for their preferable working time, which is usually settled at evening or weekend. For part-time students, this is a nature part of their study life, when they have to budget their reading/working hours aside of their ordinary working hours. Communication with supervisors and instructors is also a vital part of this learning process. Gathering is therefore considered as an important event, that can be used both for instructing the technical details of the course and mental or psychological supports to the learners, especially in a start-up phase. It is a common fact that during the gatherings, the 3

4 students work more intensively and efficiently. Gatherings also provide openings for class discussions, exchange of information and experiences, and back-up for technical help for online accesses, and so on. While students make greater and greater efforts for their lecture work, they also tend to decline their expectations to the course. This might have indicated the up and down phases of their learning curve: Even they work harder and harder with lectures, they might face greater challenges gradually, especially their midterm of learning process. From this respect, it seems to make sense to observe their expectations to the course were best at the course starting, but decline after that and reclaim little bit at last evaluation. THE DIVIDED FEEDBACK AND CONTRA EXPERIENCES AMONG THE STUDENTS Table 2 summarized the positive and negative comments from students throughout the course period. Among the comments from students, there seems to be divided and contra aspects: These are positive and enthusiastic about the course organization and content contra these are frustrated and not satisfied. Though this is a common dividing phenomenon for every class, it is still interesting to notice these contra opinions/observations. For example, about LMS/BB (Blackboard), there are two positive comments on that but one negative experience as well from October 2004 survey. Also, from the rest 3 surveys, there seem to be many opposite opinions and experiences from the same course organization. While some say lectures are fun and well informed/organized, some others experienced as lecture abstract and hard to understand. While some experienced good supervising/guiding from the lectures and online following up, some others wished to have more direct and detailed supervising/guiding, and even more relevant cases. Why this distinction and why such contrary? Comments\Evaluation October 2004 (N=23) December 2004 (N=6) January 2005 (N=21) April 2005 (N=10) Most satisfied Course was well organized. Professional lecturers. Positive about LMS (Blackboard) and its functions for discussions and assignments. Efficient organizing of gatherings Exciting and interesting lectures in communication Exciting (but also scared) with video filming, which is a good assignment for us Self-responsibility for own learning Lectures are fun and beneficial, especially acting play part Quick feedback from lecturers/supervisors via e-post Information on course plan was good. Lecturers were well prepared for lectures Interesting lecture content I think lecture in communication part was pretty good Good information from both lectures and internet (BB) Course was well structured and easy to Lectures and possibilities for working and debating in groups in campus Freedom to work independently with assignments Good supervising and following up process, and good information Spent little bit time for getting familiar with follow online LMS, appreciated this LMS way of working Good lectures which is very flexible. That fits very well for me when I am working and having the kids Gatherings are valuable and important, and these are also beneficial. I appreciated group discussions Interesting and beneficial learning plan and curriculum/syllabus Most unsatisfied I wished there was not so much silent while Little bit difficult to work with LMS/Blackboard, maybe should add few exercises for quick learning It took much time to reach the information online Not able to engage in discussions online Nothing to complain. Wish to have weekly lectures, since this is unusual for full-time students We have short days and I feel the time was not spent efficiently Having problems with chat function Still feel needs for faceto-face meetings and discussions Not able to combine the curriculum/syllabus with real cases in kid garden. Few detailed samples to show the theories Working together with full-time and part-time students in a group, could not make this works Too little lectures and little direct contacts with others in the class TABLE 2 A SUMMARY OF COMMENTS FROM THE COURSE EVALUATIONS THROUGHOUT COURSE PERIOD Group composition as fulltime and part-time together did not work Problems for group meetings and discussions online, maybe we are too many, so it is hard to find availability for everyone. Someone in my group has poor online access No inspiration to work online, and wish to have more/longer lectures We have not got substantial content There has been difficult to get LMS/BB to work in the group, as thought One student responded the survey as Exciting (but also scared) with video filming, which is a good assignment for us. Perhaps this is a distinguished and contrary, but also co-existed feeling and experience for a learner/student? This combination of exciting and scared and their co-existed mechanism is the essential motivation or challenge for a learner s appreciation and dissatisfaction for a course. It is nature for one to feel exciting for new assignments or new knowledge, 4

5 and for such case, the motivation will be the dominated part and a learning process will progress. If however, one feel too much scared about new assignments or new knowledge, there will be hard to initiate a learning process or to continue it. Obviously, both elements can be represented within one person or certainly within one class of many students. As mentioned, the current study has exemplified a class of students, composed by fulltime and part-time students. The direct class observation and few in depth interview indicate a clear distinction between these two groups in their opinions and attitudes toward course organization, online learning process and motivations for the study. The fulltime students are usually young, often enrolled directly from secondary school, so most of them are inexperienced in their profession work. They have a great learning curve for coming up to university and college learning patterns, which are usually self-conducted and self-disciplined based. Such flexible and online based learning patterns might not sound familiar for this group of students, so it is understandable that they wish to have more direct or detailed supervising (as indicated both in table 2 and 3). Their knowledge understanding and absorbing seems to be the main challenges for their learning process. The part-time students, on the other hand, are frequently matured and have their daily work aside of this study. Though they might have to budget their limited time for their studies, they are able to compensate time with their work experience. Their learning curve, especially for self-conducted and self-disciplined study might not be that great. They appreciated the flexible and online course organization and work efficiently within a group. However, they will probably deal with their time budget during their course period. Comments\Evaluation October 2004 (N=23) December 2004 (N=6) January 2005 (N=21) April 2005 (N=10) Suggested improvement Get detailed discussion topics in LMS/BB Nothing needs to be changed, the gatherings worked well, wish we start teamwork online Wish to have more practice related assignments at start, since I need extra exercise to use LMS/BB I wished more specific and topic related lectures, rather with cases and samples More teamwork within groups Stay in classroom and work in small groups with cases, since teamwork online did not work Try to be self-active and self-engaged. Individual supervising/guiding Demonstrating more cases/samples related with kid garden Spend whole days together when gathering Do not combine the fulltime and part-time students together Rather work with a case as beginning, and that is the way to learn Detailed assignments to work in LMS/BB Having full days and more lectures Detailed assignments for groups will help us to start Professional related short assignments, so we feel more relevance through lectures Better information for use of LMS/BB If you use ICT, you must be active online More cases related to kid garden professions. Feel this lecture was designed for a leader No suggestion and happy with harvest learning this year More supervising TABLE 3 A SUMMARY OF SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENT FROM THE COURSE EVALUATIONS THROUGHOUT COURSE PERIOD There is a clear potential to combine these two groups students together, so they can learn and support each other. However, their distinctions and different backgrounds seem to be the big hurdle such a combination. It is a challenging task for course organizers to mix them into one group, as they also expressed unwillingness for such combination. Table 3 listed up suggested improvement from students. Even for such suggestions, there are such distinctions noticed, as Do not combine the fulltime and part-time students together or other contra experiences/opinions such as Better information for use of LMS/BB (criticism) versus If you use ICT, you must be active online (positive appraise). This means there is still a need to convince these two groups students work together as one team. Sometimes, one has to consider to tradeoff or balance the authorized directing versus free voluntary self-conducting [1] and compromise the best option. THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTING PLAY FOR LEARNING COMMUNICATION SKILLS Nevertheless, acting play seems to be the most exciting, but also efficient approach for learning communication skills for both two groups. Citations from the student surveys from table 3 about acting play are: Exciting and interesting lectures in communication Exciting (but also scared) with video filming, which is a good assignment for us Lectures are fun and beneficial, especially acting play part I think lecture in communication part was pretty good There were no critical or negative comments toward acting play in the same surveys. Most students agreed this was a new and exciting way to learn communication skills. By acting play, the students are able to exercise, express and play their roles in a settled or thinkable situation. Furthermore, they can record their actions and reactions and study these interactions in details. This approach makes theoretical explanations becoming more alive and understandable. The video clip and records make the knowledge restorable and retrievable. Previous pedagogical research work also supported the learning models associated with this approach. There has been analyzed on learning characteristics related to active students in several active learning models, such as participation 5

6 oriented, action learning, engagement theory and the contributing student [3]. The acting play approach has combined each element above into a particular course and it s organizing. Aside of the traditional acting play and video clip/record approaches, the current study introduced LMS to digitalize the course information, not only for curriculum/syllabus, but also for organizing of video clip/records and analysis reports. In this way, there will be easy for students to access the information and analysis, quick for lecturers/instructors to distribute course plans and summarize the progress updating, available for other analysts to collect and compare the data. By all meanings, this combination of acting play and LMS is an innovative approach for pedagogical teaching. LMS IN NON-VERBAL INTERACTION BASED LEARNING APPROACH OPENINGS AND CHALLENGES The current study has demonstrated using LMS in non-verbal interaction based learning approach. The innovative part of this approach was combined acting play (active motion and expression) and analysis (written and documentation based thinking and reflections), as well as LMS application for this combination in practice. The experience and feedback from the students are mostly positive and beneficial. This LMS applied non-verbal interaction learning pattern provides new openings for pedagogical experiments and debates. The study also opens a possibility to combine the fulltime and part-time students to attending a same class and work together. This combination will result the significant teaching efficiency and reduce the resource spending. In a pedagogical aspect, this will also create a wider and vary composition of an online community, and activate the class debates and learning processes [5]. The challenge part, aside of purely technical hurdling of LMS, is the proper balancing of LMS application and the lecture content. No matter which technique or approach was introduced, whether it was acting play or it was digitalizing of written analysis, there always a need for both. Too much on one side will be too much solo play and it will not work well. The student group process has a good intention, but needs to be stimulated and backed up from the supervisors. As research work indicated, the LMS application combined with continual surveys, evaluations and feedback and following up are the powerful motivation factor for students in an online community [7]. This continuation of communication between lecturers and learners is vital part of study organization and it shall be applied as a standard for most of online courses. The overall experience of this combination approach was good the method can be recommended for further LMS implementations, in other disciplines. The essential elements are acting play combined with written analysis, and LMS application combined video clip/session. Furthermore, the experience and outcomes from this study might compare with research results from online study cases to enrich our knowledge for LMS application, communication skills, acting play or other pedagogical issues. REFERENCES [1] Arneberg, Per, " Læring i dialog på nettet, SOFFs skriftserie 1/2003. [2] Chang, Shujen, L, The Effects of Facilitation on Cognitive Restructuring in an Online Learning Environment, The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, Volume 3, Number 3, Winter 2005, [3] Collis, Betty & Moonen, Jef, Flexible learning in a digital world: experiences and expectations, Open & distance learning series, London : Kogan Page, [4] Greene, H., Carol, " Creating Connections: A Pilot Study on an Online Community of Learners, The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, Volume 3, Number 3, Winter 2005, [5] Jones, Norah & Peachey, Paul, " The Development of Socialization in an On-line Learning Environment, The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, Volume 3, Number 3, Winter 2005, [6] Ko, Chi C., Chen, Jianping & Chen, Ben M., Creating web-based laboratories, New York: Springer, [7] Smith, Cecil, M. & Winking-Diaz, Amy, " Increasing Students'Interactivity in an Online Course, The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, Volume 2, Number 3, Winter 2004, [8] Skarstein, Siv & Toska, Jan, Atle, " Det umuliges kunst? Kritisk faktorer i ledelse og strategi ved satsing på fleksibel utdanning/læring ved et norsk universitet, SOFFs skriftserie 4/2003. [9] Skarstein, Siv & Toska, Jan, Atle, " Fleksibilisering visjoner og valg. Organisatorisk og ledelsesmessige utfordringer i utvikling av fleksible utdanningstilbud ved en norsk høgskole, SOFFs skriftserie 3/2003. [10] Støkken, Anne, Marie & Wilhemsen, Janne, " Jeg har en motor inni meg som driver meg sjøl Livet som voksen fleksibel student, Norgesuniveristets skriftserie 2/