Ken Carroll

 Note: This post is one of several in this month’s Work/Learning Blog Carnival over at Manish Mohan’s blog. 

Mixing sociology with education was not something language teachers did in the past. Nor was it something that hard-headed managers did in the work environment. Recently, however, we have all been forced to look at learning in social networks and online communities. The web is creating new social structures that pertain to learning, but we understand very little about their dynamics. Sociology is providing some insights.

In this vein, I am reading the excellent,’ Communities of Practice,  Creating Learning Environments for Educators’.  The book edited by two British academics, Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth.  Professor Kimble describes his work as  ’socio-technical in the sense that I am interested in how best to ‘manage’ the fit between technology and the social world’ and he has written on the subject of learning networks in the past.

The (2 volume) book is highly informative and thought provoking. The first volume deals with colocated (offline) CoPs, while volume 2 looks at distributed or virtual environments.

For a newcomer (like myself) there is sometimes the feeling that sociological observation tends towards stating the obvious. (This is an issue I also had with Clay Shirky’s recent book until I got into the mindset). The very concept of a CoP has left several of my management and academic colleagues non-plussed. (’If they have always existed then what’s the big deal?’) There is something slightly elusive about these concepts on  first blush.

Finding the value, however, comes down to what you’re looking for. This book hammers home the fact that social/group formats radically influence the way we learn. In a virtual environment, this is precisely what I have been looking for, so the insights are particularly welcome. Interestingly, however, many of  the observations apply equally well to colocated groups and especially for teacher training. I’m not sure why we language tachers have so studiously ignored this line of thinking for decades, but generally speaking, we have.  

 Applying it in the workplace

But there are other applications, and the work environment is one. Let me give you an example of a simple concept that I was able to cull from the book and apply in a concrete way in my own work. Volume 1 has a chapter called The Reflective Mentor Model, by Robbin Nicole Chapman. The author takes Papert’s (1980) notion of Constructionism to show that ‘people learn best when actively engaged in designing and building construcing artifacts to share with and critique by others’.

As it happens, I recently found the perfect context in which to apply this constructionist approach and it has worked very well. At the moment, we’re in the process of inducting (training?) some new hosts for the podcast lessons - we’ll be launching FrenchPod and ItalianPod. Instead of simply telling them how to do that we’ve focused them on producing ‘artifacts’, that is samples of the lessons they eventually aspire to. We encourage participatns to produce a much as possible - a lesson per day, for example. After that, we get together with them as well as practitioners of differing levels/experience, to reflect, discuss, and offer feedback.

The focus on doing has been literally very productive. Discussion are focused and concrete, the process of learning, visible. We blog as we go along, and we link to samples of the artifacts as we do so. We’ve also started recording the feedback sessions themselves and linking to those, too.  

This approach has been very beneficial on many levels. For one thing, we are now developing an archived history of the learning that can be used in the future, including learner comments and all the rest. Most of all, the new hosts are learning the skills in an efficient and productive way. They are learing by doing, in collaboration with people who have a level of expertize in the field.  

This particular initiative is no more than a few weeks old, but I can see how some of the concepts that underlie group dynamics  could be very powerful in teacher training - powerful enough to unsettle how the whole thing has been done for so long. I hope too, that I’ve shown how one simple idea was applied to a real work situation effectively.

I’ve taken many new insights from this book, but I’ve only had time to go into one of them. One thing is sure, though, there’s mileage in this socoiology stuff after all.

Ken Carroll

Recently, Lisa Neal, editor in chief at E Learning magazine blogged a rather odd piece called Ten Reasons Why Podcasts are Inferior to Text. I think the post is misleading to anyone wanting to know about podcasting. I’m surprised the editor in chief at E Learning Magazine could have written it.

Her argument is somewhat muddled. The sub-heading doesn’t follow meaningfully from the title. It reads

Ten reasons podcasts don’t work for education…

So first, podcasts are inferior to text, and then they just don’t work for education. If the second statement did follow from the first, would it then mean that, apart from text, no other medium had any value in education? (You could probably argue that every medium is inferior to text, in that sense.) Should e-learning then stick to text only at that rate? Hmmm.

Given these types of logical implications, it seems an odd direction for her to take. But a comparison between text and podcast is moot anyway, because no-one has ever suggested that podcasts were superior to text, that they should be isolated from it, or that they should replace it, etc. As one ChinesePod learner, Dave, commented

I don’t like the idea of placing text in the ring versus podcasts because both offer different benefits. It seems analogous to comparing the virtues of vitamin D with vitamin C–they’re both good for you so creating a scenario where they ought to battle it out is absurd.

The real issue

The real question, to my mind concerns whether podcasting can enhance text, or go beyond it. My answer is yes it can, and for most subjects. With language learning this is obvious - podcasts provide up-to-date audio samples of the target language, often upon user request or in response to a problem. (Imagine learning languages from, ahem, text only.)

Secondly, when properly designed, audio can very effectively intergrate other elements. At SpanishPod, we use the podcasts, not just for samples of the language, but also for commentary: hosts talk about the content (grammar, vocabulary, culture) in a spontaneous, two-way, exchange that adds the human element that textbooks cannot. Lessons become events that bond practitioners with learners, personalize the experience, and aid memory. Human conversation brings an emotional dimension to the content and triggers cognitive faculties that text alone cannot. (More engagement, more learning.) It allows practitioners demonstrate and offer insights into managing context as well as cultural insights, socio-cultural competence, discourse competence, language awareness, register, pragmatics, and a number of things that textbooks traditionally do not.

And all of this is actually hyper-efficient: natural human conversation is way, way more efficient than formal, written exposition for many purposes. Podcasts also allow for sound effects, stories, guesswork, cognitive depth, humor, and more.

It is true that you cannot search a podcast as you would a text. But there are endless ways to deal with that problem: We separate the core dialog from the rest, for example, so that listeners can simply click on the part they wish. Meanwhile breaking down the podcast on a structured basis also helps. With SpanishPod, for example, you have the

• Intro
• Dialog
• Translation
• Commentary
• Dialog repetition
• Cultural Observations
• Ending

A standardized approach to the audio design means that users know the times where they find each of these elements after 2 or 3 listens. I’ve never actually heard a user complain of getting lost in the audio because lesson are short and there are clues all over the place.

I actually believe that audio and visuals are the great new frontier that, when integrated with text, will open all sorts of new learning possibilities. I won’t be abandoning these inferior media, but continuing to spend thousands of hours delving deeper into them. Clearly, however, we are all at an early stage of understanding the new media.

I’ve tried to contact Lisa. I may ask to see if she’ll give me a space on E Learning Magazine to explain why I love podcasting. It’s time to let the world know about this!

Ken Carroll