blended learning handbook

4.5 years ago, our 3 years’ worth of design, teaching, and research was crystallised into the Blended Learning for In-service Teachers’ Professional Development: Handbook for New Instructors published by NTU-SCCL Press. while the book is still listed on SCCL’s website, the《混成式在职教师培训——新手指导员手册》 appears to be out-of-print. so sharing here a proof copy (not the final imprint) so that readers who are interested can still access the our experiences and knowledge within (:

on leadership

was reading two books in preparation for an opportunity to extend the lifelong learning experiences, and here are a few quotes (with emphasis added) that appeared in the first book which i found personally meaningful:

“You’re recently promoted. You’re now a vice-president or a provost or a department supervisor. Now the work begins. You haven’t arrived, and you’ve only begun to travel. In the same way, having children means only that the work of becoming a parent has begun. The biological event is very different from the love and commitment, the skinned knees and dirty diapers …… the sacrifices for tuition and music lessons, the laughter and the tears — these kinds of things add up to earning the title ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’. One becomes a leader, I believe, through doing the work of a leader. It’s often difficult and painful and sometimes even unrewarding, and it’s work …… I hope that you, too, will discover that so much of leadership is music from the heart.”

(De Pree, 2008, p.9-10)

“The promises we make as leaders must resonate with our beliefs and values. Otherwise they ring false, and people know it. In our lives as leaders, we frequently find ourselves in situations where skill and technique fail us. At times, professional qualifications simply aren’t enough. We need to resort to deeper resources, resources beyond technique and the jargon of seminars, resources rooted in our beliefs and values. It behooves us, then, to find our voices.

(De Pree, 2008, p.28)

“Vision is the basis for the best kind of leadership. A vision exists somewhere when teams succeed. Instinctively, we most of us follow a leader who has real vision and who can transform that vision into a meaningful and hopeful strategy. I’m not talking here about next quarter’s sales targets — that is no vision. But the tenders of visions are often lonely, usually unpopular, and frequently demand that others change. People with a vision injects ambiguity and risk and uncertainty into our lives. They embark on voyages to new worlds.”

(De Pree, 2008, p.31-32)

“Moving up the hierarchy does not confer competence. This is hard to keep in mind …… A promotion likely to pan out produces temporary incompetence, the kind of awkwardness that always comes before deeper understanding. The only appropriate response to a promotion is ‘Good grief, have I got a lot to learn now!‘”

(De Pree, 2008, p.34)

“In a way, leadership is as delicate as Mozart’s melodies. The music exists and it doesn’t. It is written on the page, but it means nothing until performed and heard. Much of its effect depends on the performer and the listener. The best leaders, like the best music, inspire us to new possibilities.

(De Pree, 2008, p.38)

Reference:
De Pree, M. (2008). Leadership jazz: The essential elements of a great leader. New York: Crown Business.

class size, learning, and teaching

was at a chat the other day and was prompted the question “people says class size matters. what do you think?” and my response created on-the-fly goes somewhat like this:

the term of ‘class size’ concerns two main ideas: 1. classroom management, and 2. learning. the two ideas are inter-related, but often the first idea may become the focus, especially in a classroom where lessons are transmissionist (i.e., the teacher talks and ‘download’ knowledge to students who are (assumed to be) listening, and learning (is assumed) to take place by (passive) listening with the occasional IRE discourse). in such a case, class size matters if there are many ‘disruptive’ students; but it probably doesnt matter if the students are all students who are non-disruptive to the lesson delivery, and of course, the IRE discourse.

what if learning is a participatory, interactive, and social phenomenon? such learning would often be carried out in group settings. given a class of 40, how many groups should a teacher allow students to form? from a classroom management perspective, the fewer the groups may appear to be easier for managing and control. 40 divided by 8 gives 5 groups, and a teacher needs to only manage 5 groups. however, literature on collaborative learning would advise groups of 3-4 for more effective learning in groups. that would mean 10 groups, doubling the 5 earlier. assuming a teacher has designed and put in place processes and scaffolds to guide effective group work, the teacher’s work does not end here. the teacher now becomes the facilitator of learning. facilitation, a word often used, is difficult in practice as it may require a teacher to analyse the current state of learning, prompt questions, probe students’ thinking, provide alternate perspectives, all actions on-the-fly to effectively customised what s/he is going to say when s/he appears at each group. would class size matter? given that curriculum time is fixed, the amount of meaningful facilitation for deeper learning a teacher can provide to students would be divided by the number of groups. smaller number of groups means more quality time for each group of students. this applies to facilitation of online discourse for learning too. so, does class size matter?

transmissionist or participatory, a teacher will provide assignments for students to complete. given a class of 40, let’s start with transmissionist way of learning – each student is required to submit a 3-min oral performance recorded and uploaded to the LMS, a teacher would need to spend at least 120 mins just to listen to each audio clip, without considering the amount of time needed to assess, think, and provide meaningful feedback to each student/recording. if the class is made up of 30 students, the difference would be 30 mins of listening time. the same computation can apply to written assignments too. if learning is participatory – each student is required to write an online post, and thereafter reply to at least 2 peers’ posts to learn through interaction. the number of posts a class of 30 students, versus a class of 40 students, could be significantly different. so, does class size matter?

classroom students photo

so in conclusion, does class size matter? your perspective (and conception) of learning would determine the answer.

记iMTL 进阶课 in-progress

yesterday was the second f2f lesson of our iMTL 进阶课 (wondering why the english course title uses ‘intermediate’?). the first f2f was exactly 1 month ago. in this course, the (old) title (which 露丝 and I din bother to change) included keywords ‘SDL’ and ‘CoL’. so, i had used the first hour of yesterday’s session to conduct a co-generative dialogue on 自主学习 (self-directed learning). and the following is the reification of our discourse:

14/8 discourse artefact – 自主学习 SDL;participants: 馨云、一凤、伟如、美娴、崇蕾、侯琳、玉侠、春容

towards the end of the conversation, i was pleasantly surprised that most, if not all, of the key ideas of SDL were surfaced without me needing to introduce them. sounds like a phenomenographic dialogue (if such thing exists; if not can cite Tan, 2019). realised this when i ran through the deck of slides adapted from a 12470 Clinic conducted some three years ago. was interested to see what the individually meaningful ideas that the teachers (馨云、一凤、伟如、美娴、崇蕾、侯琳、玉侠、春容) had created, i allowed them to complete a 2-qn survey via google form:

reflecting away, with qr code on the left, and the discourse artefact on the right in front

and here’s what they wrote:

q1. 我原来以为 … …q2. 我现在认识到 … …
让学生自己完成作业就能算是自主学习。自主学习包含了教师充足的设计与准备,让学生能够明白自己需要学什么、提供选择并给予学生自我评估的机会。
促进小学生完全自主学习是可能的,现在明白这个能力需要时间的发展。在小学阶段培养学生自主学习的能力是十分重要的。
Self directed learning 很容易达成学生需要确定学习目标和监督学习进展等
SDL就是E learning SDL 可以和很多东西有关。比如:老师的角色是什么、学生的学习效率如何
学生只要是能独立完成学习任务就是自主学习(如ezhishi)自主学习也有分几个等级,可以让学生主动找出自己需要学习什么,并自主地去提问,找答案。
自主学习是让学生单独、独立地学习在小学阶段,老师还是得先设计出学习活动让学生参与。适当地使用ICT能提高教学效应。
自主学习是学生有不同学习方式的选择。我们现在正处于学生是被动状态,要想让学生养成自主学习的习惯需要长时间的培养。
自主学习就是要让学生学习时有自主权,依据学生所需要或缺乏的那一块,提供更多的学习活动,辅助他们,让他们能够成功学习。的确如此。接触了一个新的概念solo taxonomy
自主学习只是做活动对主动学习有更深一层的理解,例如:学习动机、让学生能有想要学习的动机以及引学练用评和自主学习有密切的关系。

looks like 满满的学习 to you? and it’s not through transmission (of knowledge).

looking forward to the next session on 14 Sep for more knowledge creation (: