Pitching for the VLE : the distance student voice

Neil Selwyn is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash and worth following if, like me, you get disturbed by ‘technology for education’ hype.  From reading some of Selwyn’s previous research I have constructed him as a defender of democracy in Education. For December reading 2014 he has posted up an article on his academia site https://monash.academia.edu/NeilSelwyn titled ‘minding our language’ in which he draws a contrast between the ‘complex realities’ of Education and by implication, what it means to be a student, and the ‘ restricted ‘ language of ‘Ed-Tech Speak (he provides a list of 50 ED-Tech Speak terms in the appendix).

So far so very good (and that is largely my overall conclusion). However, I am going to challenge one of his  suggestions; that it would be more appropriate to refer to ‘virtual learning environments’ (VLE) as ‘teaching management systems’. I make this challenge in the context of one genre, the distance student, by drawing from experience as both a distance student and a distance teacher.  For distance students at the Open University UK (OUUK), its VLE means much more than a ‘teaching management system’. For these students it is their campus, a place where they can get access to other students and all those other intellectual assets that are a significant aspect of being a student in Higher Education. For many the VLE is their University substantiated, a place where they can feel that they belong.  Previously that ‘sense of belonging’ to a University was only fleetingly and marginally achieved. By the  way - 'belonging' is another term that Selwyn is suspicious about when used by Ed_Tech )  

Distance learning, as pioneered by the Open Universities of the world, has democratised education for many and when technology is harnessed appropriately it can make the sense of being a student ‘real’.  A well crafted VLE, i.e. one  that is much more than a teaching management system, is the key component. So while I totally agree with Selwyn’s appraisal of Ed-Tech Speak as a ‘powerful means of advancing the interests and agendas of some social groups over others‘  (Selwyn, 2014, p.2) I wanted to speak up on behalf of the the VLE, as situated in the history of Open and Distance Learning.

Selwyn, N. (2014). Minding_our_Language. https://monash.academia.edu/NeilSelwyn. 

Virtual Social Interaction - does it mean Mind Change?

As someone who has been studying Virtual Social Interaction for the last 10 years I intend to read Susan Greenfield latest book Mind Change – How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Its publication has attracted a great deal of media attention and today Susan Greenfield was the invited speaker at the Royal Society of Arts, UK, the audio recording of this event is here.

The chair of the event, Jonathan Rowson, who leads the Social Brain project at the RSA, asked Greenfield about her vision when writing the book.  By response she listed her three personal aspirations for 'folks' of the future; a strong sense of identity, fulfillment and that they would be useful to society, with all three achieved through creativity. The interpretation that some have made is that Greenfield is suggesting that the Internet is compromising creativity and therefore  those aspirations.

For example, one of the issues she raised at the RSA event is the effect that the Internet is having on interpersonal communication skills.  In an interview for Hard Talk here

with Stephen Sakur she also addressed this issue, and  in more detail. I quote

(In everyday life) 'we’re trying to process what we’re each saying. We’re judging from voice tone, from body language, what the person is feeling. On the screen, those cues are not available to you. …………..So if you are constantly rehearsing a form of communication where you don’t practice eye contact, body language, voice tone interpretation it seems not unreasonable to say you’re not going to be so good at those things’.

 Susan Greenfield is not the first to raise concerns on this issue; the question of whether remote interpersonal communication mediated by a computer compromises the quality of interpersonal interaction has been debated for over 3 decades.   However, her academic discipline, neuroscience, has led her to question the impact on the brain, as well as socially.  

It is why her book is a must read for me since I am researching from both these perspectives.  I am investigating interpersonal interaction in  online forums when writing is the mode of communication, and monitoring the process neurally.    Being able to interact remotely has the potential to benefit distance education profoundly and is why I have been beavering away at trying to understand more about the student experience of this form of interaction.  Given the growing popularity of MOOCs  (Massive Open Online Courses) for example, as offered by Futurelearn,  https://www.futurelearn.com/ it is likely to remain a  topic for debate (MOOCs rely on text based forums for social interaction)as the answer is important.  As is evidence, and that is what I am hoping to provide. Evidence, or more specifically the lack of it, is an area where Susan Greenfield is often challenged see Professor Dorothy Bishop’s comments here http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/ and Ben Goldacre’s here .

I agree with Greenfield that it is important to raise questions about the effect that the Internet is having on the brain, and on our culture. I also agree with Bishop and Goldacre, evidence that is open to review by peers should be what provides the answers.  Hopefully we can address some relevant questions, and and answers,  at an upcoming event  that we are starting to plan between the Technologies  SIG and the Neuroscience & Education SIG at BERA  http://www.bera.ac.uk/ sometime during  Spring of 2015. 

Goodbye to Neuromyths

Being able to collect data in digital form has been profound for Neuroscience.  It has led to a rapid increase in knowledge about brain processes. Realising the potential of this knowledge for education i.e. what the brain might be doing while we learn has been bedevilled by neuromyths (interventions that claim to be informed by neuroscience but do not have any scientific provenance). Although these interventions have been challenged by both Neuroscientists and Educationalists they haven't always been dispelled. Yesterday, at the annual conference held by BERA http://www.bera.ac.uk/ Steven Spence from university of Derby and colleagues provided recent evidence (collected from NQTs, and also more senior practitioners) that supports this assertion.

Two other presentations,  one in the context of enabling social interaction for children with autism, the other on virtual social interaction, provided examples of how multidisciplinary work can progress in a principled way and be of value to learning.  There were some notable  similarities between them

•   Iterative development of procedures based on a true synergy between education & neuroscience

•   A pragmatic approach to method

•    Data collected in the wild, i.e. the classroom, the online forum, without compromising the complexity of these contexts.

As the presenter for one of these, virtual social interaction, it was exciting (and reassuring!) to find other researchers subscribing to this approach. Although I have attended a great many events on EdNeuroscience, starting with the TLRP seminar series 2005-2006 http://www.tlrp.org/users/cs5.html

the presentation by Jackie Ravet & Justin Williams, University of Aberdeen, was a first experience for me; a 'hard core ' neuroscientist and practitioner focused drama specialist demonstrating so clearly how they work together to test out the value of a Neuroscience knowledge base in an formal education context.

Presenting to an audience of educationalists, many of who have extensive practitioner experience and also a wide research interests, was a great opportunity to have our  work interrogated. There is real hope that we can say goodbye to the discourse of neuromyths and get on with the business of making neuroscience knowledge useful for Education.

London Virtual Interaction Workshop

This work shop was organised by Antonia Hamilton and  Sylvia Xuini Pan, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience  hamilton lab.

Why did I attend? I study social interaction when it is mediated by a computer and takes  takes place asynchronously between distance students who have no previous knowledge of each other -  I study virtual social interaction. Many of the contributors to this workshop are studying aspects of social interaction (eye gaze, body movement, facial expression, sound) that are not available in online contexts that use computer mediated communication (CMC) but they did address processes that are common to each such as joint attention, affiliation, trust, reciprocity, turn taking (a process that is disrupted when communication is asynchronous) and the most challenging concept of them all,  synchrony. Synchrony was a concept that pervaded most of the talks therefore I was both reassured and disappointed when questions posed later in the conference - why is synchrony important for social interaction? is there a neural explanation? could not be answered by any of the delegates, apparently

What are my headlines from this event.

•   Be alert to circular reasoning (delegate)

•   Realism is not a realistic criterion - realism is a relative notion -challenge the critical parameters and values that matter (Beatrice de Gelder)

•   Joint attention - KNOWING we are both looking is the critical factor (Leonard Schilbach)

•   Important to think about social scaffolds i.e put the social into social interaction (Daniel Richardson)

•   Social interaction is a one trial problem ( Antonio Hamilton)

Ideas that arose for me that I need to pursue in order to study social interaction in a learning context

For joint tasks decision there may be a difference between situations that require a right/wrong answer as opposed to the construction of knowledge and production of a joint artefact ( the processes that underpin group work in FE and HE and organisations ) -an idea stimulated by Bahador Bahrami

An experience that is often voiced by students that use CMC is that the others involved do not seem to be real.  Therefore I need to explore the work on plausibility (as described by Mel Slater).

Antonia Hamilton seeded the final discussion session by suggesting a model for how synergy is achieved between the study of social interaction by psychologists and the HCI folk who provide the technology behind virtual interaction. Could I take anything from this that would help me develop a synergy between virtual interaction in practice ( i.e. students using CMC for group work ) and theoretical models of social interaction that are neuro-scientifically plausible?

Thanks to all those who contributed list of contributors - you  all provided great value

Experience in online networks- some massive

For one week in 2012 the emotional content of Newsfeeds from 689,003 Facebook users was manipulated; by reducing the number of positive expressions, or the number negative expressions. The findings were reported in PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

The publication resulted in a huge outcry about the ethics of Facebook manipulating Newsfeeds in this way - see  here  and here  and comments posted directly to PNAS, as to whether Facebook users actually  give  'informed' consent for this kind of experiment and what the consequences for individuals could be. It is a debate worth having. However it seems that it was at the expense of a critical look at the authors ( A.D. Kramer, J.E. Guillory, and J.T. Hancock) claim about 'emotional contagion on a massive scale'.  From the perspective of  someone interested in social learning at a distance using computer mediated communication the article missed some key points about the emotional experience of  'written' interpersonal interaction .  So I wrote a letter to PNAS but it will not be published (yes it was rejected).  Neverthess here it is.

The outcome of the manipulation was as follows;  a reduction of positive expressions produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts with the opposite pattern occurring when negative expressions were manipulated. The authors claim that these findings show that emotional contagion can be elicited in the absence of nonverbal cues and that given the link between emotion and well being the finding could be important for public health. There are implications in another domain, education, specifically for social learning online.  In higher education an increasing number of universities and MOOC platforms are providing facilities for students to communicate with each other remotely using social media, e.g. text based forums.  The opportunity for students to  ‘learn by discussion’, to collaborate with each other on a shared task, ‘learning by collaboration’, are extremely effective ways of achieving depth of understanding (3) and also equip students for the teamwork skills required by modern organizations. However, the emotional valence of the experience is an important factor.  Reports that social interaction online is less satisfactory and experientially ‘uncanny’ (1,4) is why the findings of (2) are relevant.  Interpersonal interaction defines social learning however (2) claim that for their study contagion and social interaction are disentangled.

Two constructs are challenged: the conceptualization of emotional contagion and mimicry, assumptions about ‘direct interaction’. A taxonomy, on which to base the definitional nuance of the emotional experience that results when others share one’s emotional experience: mimicry, contagion, personal distress, affective empathy, cognition empathy, sympathy, and the criteria that distinguish each, has been formulated (5). Mimicry and emotional contagion are both characterized by affective behavior while emotional contagion involves affective experience and isomorphism. Although affective behavior was elicited the authors (based on the cross-emotional encouragement effect) concluded that mimicry, as an explanation, was not sufficient. However claiming contagion is not substantiated; they do not have any data to confirm that affective experience and affective isomorphy occurred.

That ‘emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction’ is the significance claim. However, conceptually ‘direct interaction’ is underdeveloped.  ‘Direct interaction’, as when individuals meet face-to-face, involves two shared aspects, time frame and place. Asynchronous interaction means conversational turns may be disrupted and response is usually delayed, while interacting in an online space means that multisensory information is not available and real time context is not shared. The specification of all these factors is crucial when evaluating emotion communicated online through writing.  For Facebook, a written communication from ‘friends’ will sometimes results in  ‘friends’ moderating their responses (the data that the authors collected).  That is the essence of human communication: the use of written language and metacognition. The usefulness of the study lies in the foregrounding the power of language. However, the value of this approach, theoretical and practical, will depend on substantial integration with research in two fields, emotion and computer mediated communication.

(1) BAYNE, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: Teaching and learning in virtual worlds. ALT-J  Research in Learning Technology, 16, 197-205.

(2) KRAMER, A. D. I., GUILLORY, J. E. & HANCOCK, J. T. (2014) Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111, 8788-8790.

(3) LAURILLARD, D. (2012) Teaching as a design science. Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology., New York, London, Routledge.

(4) ROBINSON, K. (2013) The interrelationship of emotion and cognition when students undertake collaborative group work online: An interdiscplinary approach. Computers & Education, 62, 298-307.

(5) WALTER, H. (2011) Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits and Genes. Emotion Review, 4, 9-23.