If you follow me on twitter, you are probably very well aware of my rough ride in my summer class. So, my final paper has been handed in, and I have been mulling over what I can take away from this experience. This may turn into more than one post, but I think it’s important.

We all know that things are changing fast as far as education is concerned. All of a sudden, instructors have access to all sorts of tools. In this class alone, we were required to use the following instructional tools:

1. Blackboard
2. Online readings
3. A book (yes a normal book – I am listing ALL of the tools)
4. Wikispaces
5. Diigo
6. GoogleDocs
7. jMAP
8. Screenhunter (I used Snagit)
9. We had to create a website (I used vi)
10. My group used meebo to meet (Blackboard is not so great with synchronous communications)
11. My group used slideshare

That is a lot of tools! That should be great right? In theory, educators now have lots of inexpensive tools that can be used to make their students’ learning experiences more meaningful.

The “more meaningful” bit is where it gets tricky. In order for instruction using these technical tools to be meaningful, strong design must go into the instruction. Without this design, students will be frustrated and refuse to use the tools, and this arsenal of new tools we have available to apply to instruction will become useless.

I am at an advantage here; I work in a group that creates technical training for our customers, partners, and internal personnel. I know what has to go into planning reusable technical labs that allow students to use all their cognitive powers to concentrate on lesson objectives (and not on learning yet another tool).

This is a critical point: it places an unfair cognitive burden on students when you expect them to learn new technical tools at the same time they are learning new lesson materials. You must either make the technology invisible, or teach them how to use the technology.

Here are things that need to be thought about when designing a class using these technical tools:

• Just because it was easy for you to pick up one of these new Learning 2.0 tools doesn’t mean that it will be as easy for your students.
  You must provide instruction for the tools for those students who need them.
• Will it run on all Operating Systems?
  If you have a PC, will this new software run on a Mac?
• Does the software have minimum requirements?
  Will it run on all versions of Windows? Mac? All the flavors of Linux?
  Does it require Microsoft Office products, or can it run on OpenOffice?
  Do you need a certain amount of memory? You should really let your students know about this before the class starts, so they have a chance to tune up their computer.
• Are there clear instructions available on how to access/install/use the software?
  If not, you need to write these instructions before the class runs.
  Don’t expect the learners will just figure it out, especially if this is not a class on how to access/install/use this software.
• Are there security considerations to using the software?
  As much as I like Diigo, it’s not something I could design into my courses because of confidentiality agreements.
• Be available during the assignment window to help with technical questions.
  If you are going to require students to use these tools, plan on being very available during the assignment periods. If assignments are due on Thursday nights, you will probably get lots of questions Thursday afternoon. (You could probably address this need with a wiki).
• Do not burden the technical students in the class with being the technical mentors.
  Your techie students probably won’t mind helping, but they did not take the class to sharpen their skills. If they are helping other students learn the technology, they are being robbed of learning time. That’s not really fair.
• Be sure to keep the technical documentation up-to-date
  Again, a wiki may come in very handy here.

In short, the stuff I learned in this class was not on the syllabus. It occurred to me I am probably the worst student possible for this class. I hope this post didn’t come across as too negative.

So what do you think? Am I completely off-base? Did I leave any good planning advice out of my list?

This post has been bubbling in my brain for about two weeks. Our group finally turned in our midterm project, so I have a little time to get these thoughts out of my head.

Before I start let me say something to my group. I am just using our collective painful experience to illustrate a point. If you disagree with anything I say, please leave a comment and set the record straight!

I am in a class this summer called “Designing Online Collaborative Learning”. To the best of my recollection, there were no technical prerequisites for the class. I took the class because I wanted to become more familiar with how the principles of group theory could be applied to a Learning 2.0 environment.

After completing a survey, we were put into groups to create a lesson that has learners define factors that make Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) successful, create causal maps, create a shared theory of CSCL, do research to support that theory, and finally create a web page.

Now my group are self-professed non-techies. And they really are not very technical (it’s true guys!!). About 75% of my time has been devoted to helping and coaching everyone to learn some of the social media skills needed to complete our project. We used a wiki, slideshare (which went down for most of the weekend the project was due!), polldaddy, meebo, and  edublogs.

Now I’ve been using tools like this for about 12 years, so I can figure out the nuances between different sites. If you don’t use them all the time, those nuances are huge barriers. It takes time to figure them out. And if you want the project to look professional, it may take even longer!

My classmates became frustrated because they had to learn these web 2.0 skills PLUS the academic information. I am frustrated because I had to spend so much time coaching my teammates that I don’t feel I learned the academic information at all.

So how does this tie into my corporate life?

Learning 2.0 will not be successful unless it is implemented with good design principles.

Opening up collaboration and communication with the web 2.0 tools is not as easy as just pointing students to one of these sparkly tools and telling them “Go! Learn!”. Asking non-technical people to just learn a new technology places an unfair cognitive burden on those learners. It also places an unfair burden on the technical person in the class.

If the class truly becomes a collaborative group, and I feel mine was, the techie will try and bring the others in their group up to speed. That may take up all the time alloted for instruction – meaning the team learned to use a shiny toy, but did not learn the materials assigned to the course.

I think there is a lesson here too for those people who think Web 2.0 is going to save the world. You may have grown up using a computer, but there are many people in this country who can not afford a computer. There are people who can’t afford to pay for an Internet connection, or they can only afford dial-up. These people are entering the workforce too, and they don’t have the skills you have because they didn’t have access to the tools you did.

I have not heard much lately about the Digital Divide, but it’s still there. Aside from not being able to afford the Internet or equipment, there are lots of people who have to work 2 and 3 jobs to pay their rent. I can guarantee you that if they are able to be online, they aren’t worried with managing their brand. They get online to relax – play poker with their friends, play games, send stupid chain letters even though their techie daughter has told them a million times to look at Snopes first (ok off topic rant, sorry!).

What I am trying to say is, not everyone has the Web 2.0 skills because not everyone has access to the tools, and not everyone has time to get online and develop the skills. This has to be taken into consideration when creating training for a global audience.

I am NOT saying that we should avoid Learning 2.0 in our curriculum. I think these tools are powerful and should be harnessed. I AM saying this new way of instruction must be implemented thoughtfully.

We cannot afford to create instruction that requires the learner to learn how to use the instructional tools as well as learn the class materials. We either have to make the technology transparent, or we have to start teaching some of the Web 2.0 skills to our audiences.

Whew I feel better now that I’ve gotten that off my chest! Let me know what you think of these ideas.