Reflecting on Group Activity

Supplementary activity 6.4: Reflecting on the group dimension of professional practice

If you have time at the end of this unit, please comment, either in the course wiki or on your blog, on the issue of how collective work can fairly be presented for individual assessment as evidence of competence. For example, would less technically adept group members be justified in claiming that their own competence had been enhanced by working together on this with others who were more proficient? How could they evidence such a claim?

Emmm, with great difficulty. I consider the best thing to do in these types of situations involving group work is to allocate a proportion of marks to the group for the overall output and then allow each student to evaluate/mark each others contribution with the remainder of the marks. It may even be appropriate to allow the students to have some input on the marking criteria.

Overall I enjoyed our group work. I was a little worried in the beginning that there was limited collaboration, however in the end it worked out nicely. I was a bit worried about taking the lead with another group member as I was keen not to tread on anybody else’s toes, or come across forceful. It was also a risk in introducing new tools to the group like, Skype, Etherpad and Google Docs however everybody seemed to get on with it really well. Without these tools the activity would have been so much more difficult to complete and co-ordinated in time. I feel that the work was distributed equally; everybody had a chance to contribute and influence the direction and content of the presentation.

Professional Values

My own professional values, will be a extension of my own personal values, or perhaps a different emphasis. Even though I am a member of the CIPD I don’t really feel a direct connection or obligation to them, even though some of them are probably relevant. If I had to develop my own perhaps they would be based around these:

Accuracy, integrity, honesty, fairness, commitment, trust, sharing, development, change, innovation, diversity.

eLearning Practitioner Competencies/certification

It is difficult to define a clear set of competencies for an e-learning practitioner as the role theses practitioners have different meanings dependant on contexts, seniority, responsibilities and roles. For example a practitioner in formal education will need a different skill set to a practitioner in the corporate world. An e-learning instructional designer will have a very different role in comparison to an e-learning advisor or project manager. Each role and setting needs its own set of competencies; this is highlighted by the various frameworks that have been developed to support an individual’s progression into and around this field of work.

Examples of the different associations that have developed these frameworks are; The Learning Skills Network (LSN), Association of Learning Technology (ALT), Department of Education and training in Queensland Australia, The Institute of IT training and the European Institute for e-Learning (ElfEL). Each association has a slightly different take on what practitioners need to demonstrate to become an e-learning practitioner.

In the broadest terms the e-learning practitioner must have knowledge of learning technology, and they must have knowledge of pedagogical principles. They should also be able to demonstrate their active involvement with learning technology and be able to identify where and when to use it to support learning.

The profession of learning technologist

e-Learning professional - A practising individual that uses technology to support, implement or enhance learning, who is accepted by the e-learning community and also by 'customers' as a professional. The learning technologist is a generalist role within this group. These individuals have the pedagological knowledge and the technical skills to use technology to support learning.

The ‘profession’ is growing as there is a need for these types of skills. Even so the specific role of the learning technologist is not well defined as there are no clear boundaries, and im many cases seem to be an extension of existing professions; teaching and IT.

The teaching profession have recognised the gap in their knowledge, many are evolving their practice to include IT as an additional set of competencies. Less obvious is that IT professionals are looking to understand more about teaching practices, however im sure that its happening.

Reification

As Wenger (1998:65) notes, if one is exposed to too much reification, 'there may not be enough overlap in participation to recover a co-ordinated, relevant or generative meaning' (Lisewski et al, 2003)


"if I had wanted you to understand I would have explained better"

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Lisewski, Bernard and Joyce, Paul (2003) Examining the five‐stage e‐moderating model: Designed and emergent practice in the learning technology profession. Association for Learning Technology Journal, 11 (1). pp. 55-66. ISSN 0968-7769

Definitions

First go at definitions...

e-Learning – the use of technology to support or enhance a learning outcome

Professional - A practitioner who sits within, and is accepted both by the practising community and also by external individuals as a professional.

e-Learning professional - A practising individual that uses technology to support or enhance learning, who is is accepted by the e-learning community and also by 'customers' as a professional

Professionalism is ''being'?

Notes...

The idea that being a professional is a 'soft' concept, its more about ones state of mind than a check list of criteria. This is something that I have thought about before when looking at the PDP.

Being a professional is about 'being' and links in with the ideas around communities of practice, 'participation', an individual professional is nothing without a community.

Qualifications do not matter unless they are recognised as an essential for the community.

I then had a bash some criteria for being a professional:

• You need to practice your profession
• You need to actively participate and contribute to a community of practice.
• Be accepted by your profession as a professional.

Defining professional in this way makes it much easier for me to grasp as a concept. Its perhaps not a polished definition/criteria just yet, hoping to test and refine with my community (tutor group).