Taking the pulse why and how we change everything in response to learner signals

Taking the pulse: why and how we change everything in response to learner signals

Learning design, Theory

The ability to analyze and respond to learner behavior as it happens is crucial for educators. In complex learning that takes place in digital spaces, task separation between the design of instruction and its delivery does not make sense. Here is the practical approach we use in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s learning-to-action model to implement responsive learning environments by listening to learner signals and adapting design, activities, and feedback accordingly. Listening for and interpreting learner signals Educators must pay close attention to various signals that learners emit throughout their learning journey. These signals appear in several key ways: Making sense of learner signals Once these signals are identified, a nuanced approach to analysis is necessary: Adapting learning design in situ What can we change in response to learner behavior, signals, and patterns? Responding to learner signals Feedback plays a crucial role in the learning process: Balancing act When combined, these …

A shared lens around sensemaking in learning analytics

Making sense of sensemaking

Theory

In her article “A Shared Lens for Sensemaking in Learning Analytics”, Sasha Poquet argues that the field of learning analytics lacks a shared conceptual language to describe the process of sensemaking around educational data. She reviews prominent theories of sensemaking, delineating tensions between assumptions in dominant paradigms. Poquet then demonstrates the eclectic use of sensemaking frameworks across empirical learning analytics research. For instance, studies frequently conflate noticing dashboard information with interpreting its significance. To advance systematic inquiry, she calls for revisiting epistemic assumptions to reconcile tensions between cognitive and sociocultural traditions. Adopting a transactional perspective, Poquet suggests activity theory, conceptualizations of perceived situational definitions, and ecological affordance perception can jointly illuminate subjective and objective facets of sensemaking. This preliminary framework spotlights the interplay of internal worldviews, external systemic contexts, and emergent perceptual processes in appropriating analytics. The implications span research and practice. The proposed constructs enable precise characterization of variability …

What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?

What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?

Events, Global health

Watch Reda Sadki’s presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Symposium on 19 October 2023 Most significant learning that contributes to improved performance takes place outside of formal training. It occurs through informal and incidental forms of learning between peers. Effective use of peer learning requires realizing how much we can learn from each other (peer learning), experiencing the power of defying distance to solve problems together (remote learning), and feeling a growing sense of belonging to a community (social learning), emergent across country borders and health system levels (networked learning). At the ASTMH annual meeting Symposium organized by Julie Jacobson, two TGLF Alumnae, María Monzón from Argentina and Ruth Allotey from Ghana, will be sharing their analyses and reflections of how they turned peer learning into action, results, and impact. In his presentation, Reda Sadki, president of The Geneva Learning Foundation …

Collective Intelligence Cambridge Digital Education Futures Initiative

The COVID-19 Peer Hub as an example of Collective Intelligence (CI) in practice

Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

A new article by colleagues at the Cambridge Digital Education Futures Initiative (DEFI) illustrates academic understanding of Collective Intelligence (CI) through the COVID-19 Peer Hub, a peer learning initiative organized by over 6,000 frontline health workers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with support from The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), in response to the initial shock of the pandemic on immunization services that placed 80 million children at risk of missing lifesaving vaccines. Learn more about the COVID-19 Peer Hub… From the abstract: Collective Intelligence (CI) is important for groups that seek to address shared problems. CI in human groups can be mediated by educational technologies. The current paper presents a framework to support design thinking in relation to CI educational technologies. Our framework is grounded in an organismic-contextualist developmental perspective that orients enquiry to the design of increasingly complex and integrated CI systems that support coordinated group problem solving …

Mission accomplished

Thinking aloud

We won. The former school teacher and humanitarian trainer who argued vociferously that nothing would ever supplant face-to-face training is now running a MOOC. The training manager who refused to consider e-learning is now running a distance learning, scenario-based simulation. People he trains are now working remotely – and a simulation, dirt-cheap and run by e-mail, is closer to modelling the real world than is the artificially and unrealistically “safe space” of the high-cost, low-volume training room. Work went through digital transformation before “training” did. The old-school learning and development manager is getting certified to run webinars. Through practice, she has surprised herself by how much she feels when running a session. A digital course run ahead of a face-to-face workshop mobilized ten times as many (people), for ten times less (money). Course participants produced tangible artefacts, directly applicable to work, through collaboration and peer review. And they did not need to …

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

Tower of Babel

#DigitalScholar

What happens when a fledgling, start-up foundation convenes learning leaders from all over the world to explore digital learning? Over 800 participants from 103 countries have joined the Geneva Learning Foundation’s #DigitalScholar course developed in conjunction with the University of Illinois College of Education and Learning Strategies International. The course officially launches on Monday. Yet participants  joining the online community have begun introducing themselves and, in the process, are already tackling challenging questions on the pedagogy, content, and economics of education and its digital transformation. “Look at all the people here!” exclaimed one Digital Scholar. And, yes, we are from everywhere. You could start from “cloudy England”, a hop-and-a-skip away from “rainy Amsterdam” and then keep travelling, stopping in any of the 103 countries where participants live. You might end up in the “paradise island” of Mauritius, “sunny but chilly” Sidney, or “hot and humid” Puerto Rico. Think about it. When Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis …

Digital learning with the Geneva Learning Foundation

Beyond MOOCs: the democratization of digital learning

Events

It is with some trepidation that I announce the Geneva Learning Foundation’s first open access digital course in partnership with the University of Illinois College of Education and Learning Strategies International. The mission of the brand-new Geneva Learning Foundation is to connect learning leaders to research, invent, and trial breakthrough approaches for new learning, talent and leadership as a way of shaping humanity and society for the better. This open access, four-week (16 hours total) online course will start on 4 July 2016 and end on the 29th. It will be taught by Bill Cope, Catherine Russ, and myself, three of the eleven charter members of the Foundation. We’ll be using Scholar to teach the latest digital learning pedagogies. Everyone will develop, peer review, and revise an outline for a course relevant to their own context of work. This outline is intended to be the practical basis for developing and offering an actual course – so this is no academic exercise. The …