M.O.D.E. and Round Robin CoLT

For the FCSCL course, we're using the book Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty as one of the texts. As we go through the course, we'll be trying to apply some of the collaborative learning techniques ("CoLTs") to our online discussions. During the current period, we're doing one of the CoLTs designed for discussion, called Round Robin.

In this CoLT, everyone has a chance to speak once before general discussion begins. So we're applying this to the M.O.D.E. approach and everyone has to post once in each stage (think, talk, work, look) before more posts can be made in that stage.

I'm finding that this helps me a lot with one of the big mistakes I feel like I often make as an online instructor--jumping in and responding to every post at the very beginning of the conversation. I feel like I don't often enough just sit back and let the students fill the space with their own voices--my voice ends up dominating because I post so much.

But since we're doing this round robin style, I'm having to "sit on my hands" and not say anything until it's my turn again. I'm finding this valuable--giving me the discipline to reflect more on what others are saying than I might normally.

Often there are students who post very frequently, too, and there's as much danger of their voices dominating as ther is of the the instructor's. I'm thinking that this round robin approach can be helpful here, too.

Testing the Waters: M.O.D.E. in Face-to-Face Discussion

In introducing M.O.D.E. to students in class yesterday, we experimented with the model by conducting a face-to-face discussion using the M.O.D.E. principles. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to experiment at great length, but even the small test we did gave a good flavor, I think, for what M.O.D.E. can do for both broadening and deepening discussion.

First I gave students the "rules of engagement" for our discussion. After having introduced the four MODEs, I told them that we were going to progress through four stages of discussion, one in each MODE. In each stage, every student would provide one response in the style of the current MODE. In round robin format, we would go around the room, each providing a "think" response, then each providing a "talk" response, etc. Between each round I would provide a re-directing or facilitative prompt.

I asked students to consider this question: "Do we need to be concerned about global warming?" I gave them a couple of minutes to think about what their first response would be--a "think" response in which they should share a fact, opinion, idea, resource or a reflective question.

I wish now that I'd written the responses down, but it was quite interesting to hear the responses. We only ended up having time for the "think" and "talk" modes, but what was interesting to me was that by making everyone get an idea out before people started responding to one another, I think more perspectives were shared before discussion was launched into than might have otherwise happened.

One student noted that it felt very manufactured. I suppose this is a risk with this type of model, and even though it was interesting as an experiment I'm not sure how wise it is to try and conduct face-to-face discussion this way. But I do think something a little more "manufactured" (or more structured) is necessary in many online discussions. While a lot of great things tend to get posted in discussions, I find discussions often going off on tangents and even my best facilitation can't reel them back in.

In any case, I hope to experiment a little more at some point with face-to-face versions of M.O.D.E. For now, I'm pleased that the structure did seem to have some benefits.

Introducing M.O.D.E. Interaction

I've been toying with these ideas for at least five years now. I can't remember exactly how it started, but it had something to do with being interested in different learning styles, and different teaching styles, and how these differences affected the ways in which technology is used for teaching. I was interested in ideas like constructivism and the social construction of knowledge--and had experienced success as a teacher using these approaches--but it felt like there was, at least at times, a disconnect between these ideas and the ways in which (some of) my students wanted to engage in knowledge-building. Not everyone was into interacting in the ways that it felt to me they had to in order to be engaged in these ways of learning.

This became especially clear in my online teaching. The very idea of "discussion" seemed to turn some students off. Some of these students wanted to just get at the content and move on. Others liked to be in the discussion, but just to read it (lurkers)--these students would tell me later what they'd gotten out of the discussion and this would surprise me since I'd never realized they'd even been reading the posts. Then there were students who loved the discussion--the ones who posted early and often, and at great length--loving the back and forth and sharing of ideas, etc.

I began to think about a range of approaches to information sharing that might happen in online discussion boards. What I ended up with is what I'm now calling M.O.D.E. Interaction [pdf]. I've tried some of the ideas outlined here in my online courses, but never put it all together in something this structured.

Recently, I was asked to teach a course in facilitating Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). It's a hybrid course, and I'll use online discussions a lot. It occured to me that the framework I'd been toying might be a great way to manage the discussions because the framework is itself about CSCL in online learning environments.

I'm also using blogs in the course I'm teaching, and I wanted to blog along with the students, so I decided to create this blog as way of documenting the experiences that my students and I have using M.O.D.E. Interaction in the course. I'm looking forward to implementing this at a level I haven't before, and to reflecting on what works and what doesn't.

Here's hoping you find this intriguing enough to use in your own online teaching! I want this to be an "open source pedagogy," and it would be great if others tried out some of these ideas and reported back to me via email or by adding comments to this blog. Just click on the link above, or in the sidebar at right, to download a PDF with my initial ideas about how M.O.D.E. Interaction works.

Anyway, the course starts in two days. Here we go...