Supported Challenge: Some Reflections

'Supported Challenge' was the title of some notes distributed in one of the T-eL sessions this semester (Gledhill, no date). The ideas within the document resonate well with me, as they argue for an approach to learning and teaching in Higher Education that moves away from the approach that has become the norm over the past couple of decades.

Gledhill notes:

In considering student satisfaction, we have concentrated too much on hygiene factors, the improvement in which can never do more than make students marginally less unhappy. Whilst not neglecting these things, we must appreciate that strong student learning will result in their radical transformation, bringing benefits to student lives including enhanced morale, greater motivation, stronger self confidence, a sense of purpose and self esteem.

As I read this paragraph for the first time, I asked the question in the margin... "And does t-eL do this?". In attempting to answer my own question, I suppse one might say, "it can do" or "it has the potential to". These are characteristics of the type of learning we do see on the MAPP, and this is due largely to (a) the nature of the course itself (positive psychology is very much focused around many of these issues, and (b) our person-centred approach to learning and teaching where we aim to support students in their chosen pathways through the assignment work. We are already adopting this 'supported challenge' approach to some degree?

Reference
Gledhill, M. (no date). Supported Challenge: Study, to learn, to change. Unpublished document.

What is meant by 'Flexible and Distributed Learning'?

The term 'Flexible and Distributed Learning' (FDL) is one that has been very much on my mind of late. The context is the development and validation of the MAPP - DL, or rather the MAPP - FDL as we are now referring to it! It seems that we as a University prefer to describe this mode of delivery as 'flexible and distributed learning' as opposed to 'distance learning'. This is in accordance with the terminology used by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) who describe flexible and distributed learning as:

"educational provision... ...through means which generally do not require the student to attend particular classes or events at particular times and particular locations." (QAA, 2010)

 I am quite comfortable with the use of FDL as a description of the mode of delivery for our 'distance' MAPP, as FDL covers distance learning, e-learning, and even blended learning. One issue it does raise for prospective students is that FDL as an abbreviation is probably not something that many are familiar with, and even the full 'Flexible and Distributed Learning' needs a little clarification in terms of what exactly do we mean by this?

In particular, one thing to clarify is how 'flexible' is our provision? We will need to clearly explain to potential students that we are still bound by the University semesters and the academic calendar in that modules will run during these times and a 15 credit module will be a semester-long module. It is not so flexible that a student could begin whenever the wish, and complete within a week if they worked through the course materials in that time. This may be the expectation for some who are looking for 'online' courses. However, the course will be flexible in that students may access materials at times more convenient for them, there is some flexibility to allow students to work through materials at their own pace (within some constraints), and they do not need to attend classes at particular times and at particular locations.

Communities of Practice

As I touched upon in an earlier post, I have been reflecting on the the concept of 'communities of practice' in relation to a newly developed website, www.thepositivepsychologypeople.com (hereon referred to as 'PPP'). In this post, I reflect further on communities of practice and how this concept effectively lies at the heart of what is being developed by PPP.

The concept of 'communities of practice' (CoP) emerged out of Lave and Wenger's (1991) monograph discussing apprenticeship and 'situated learning', in which they argue that learning is essentially a social process. Thus, they explore how practitioners of certain discplines form communities to share knowledge and experience. Individual practitioners can engage in the community in different ways, through what Lave and Wenger (1991) refer to as 'legitimate peripheral participation'. A contemporary definition of CoP is:

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly."
(Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p.1)

Unpacking this definition a little further, hree aspects of the CoP are thought to be of central importance: The domain; the community; the practice. Let's look at each of these in turn in relation to PPP as an example of of a CoP...

Domain
The CoP has a shared domain of interest. For PPP this is clear: the shared domain is positive psychology. If one wanted to be a little more specific about this it would be the 'study, application, research, and promotion of positive psychology'.

Community
The notion of community is of course central to the concept of CoP. In this context, a community would be reflected in shared activities, sharing of knowledge and experiences, and an underlying sense of support and help for members of the community. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) explcitly note that "a website in itself is not a community of practice" (p.2), and so I should point out that PPP, whilst having a web-based resource at its heart, is setting out to be more than just a website. It seeks to build a community in the way it is defined here.

Practice
A CoP is distinguished from a community of interest (CoI) in that members of a CoP should be 'practitioners'. This where PPP perhaps blurs the boundary of a CoP with a CoI as its members may range from practitioners to researchers to teachers to those with an interest in positive psychology. The latter may include people who are considering undertaking a course of study or looking to learning more about the area. However, there is still a strong desire among the core team to develop a resource, a community, that would provide support for practitioners around the world, especially those emerging from MAPP programmes into the world of the practitioner. As Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) point out, "this takes time and sustained interaction" (p. 2) and so there is time for this to develop.

The PPP website, the beginnings of a Positive Psychology CoP, was launched in March 2015. Within just two months there are already over 10,000 registered members. These of course will be people who simply have an interest in the topic of positive psychology, and not all will be practitioners. However, in time it is likely that a CoP will emerge among registered members who are also students, researchers, and practitioners.


References
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. [Available here: wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice]

MAPP 'distance' validated!

Today was the validation for the 'distance learning' version of the MAPP... or officially the MAPP-FDL. I am pleased to say it was validated. No conditions, just some recommendations and a commendation. Yippee!

One of the recommendations did relate to the use of the term 'flexible and distributed learning' (FDL) and that we should should clarify what we mean by this term. The documents were modified accordingly, and this also led to us saying a little about what we mean by FDL on the course web pages here.

If you're really interested, the full validation documents are provided in the Bb shell, within the Introduction to Positive Psychology [Distance Learning] folder. Enjoy! ;-)

Padlet, Schmadlet

A childish title for this blog post I know, but there you go. I was inspired to try Padlet after one of my fellow students on the course introduced it to the group during one of the teaching sessions. I had a quick play with it, as I had been looking for something that might help encourage MAPP students to begin jotting down and sharing ideas about dissertation topics for next year. As padlet allows postings as though on a 'wall', I thought this might work as an electronic version of 'post-it' notes, something we had used in previous years. The advantage is the discussion could build and develop over time, students could comment on others' ideas, and so on. So I thought I would give it a shot and set up a page with some brief instructions:

The students needed a bit of coaxing, but eventually they started to add some of their thoughts:

So, so far so good. It does seem a little limited in that the option to print out as a text file doesn't keep comments together (in that a comment relating to an original post is not listed alongside this). Perhaps an online mind-mapping tool is what is needed instead? The live padlet page can be found here.