Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) - A self-experiment

As part of the MA in Technical Communication & E-Learning I was given the opportunity to take part in a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project, run in cooperation by the University of Limerick and Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. Apart from an initial orientation meeting in Microsoft Teams, the project took place entirely in Oslomet's virtual campus built in OpenSim VR. Oslomet have built an entire virtual university consisting of classrooms, conference rooms and lecture theatres which can be accessed using the Firestorm VR software.

Neil's avatar and the virtual presentation. Source: Author's own screenshot from OsloMet virtual world.

The purpose of a COIL project is to give students a virtual exchange experience, allowing them to meet with other students from foreign countries and develop intercultural skills without ever having to leave the comfort of their own homes. COIL projects can be on any subject and don't have to take place in a virtual world. Oslomet have however a lot of experience using virtual worlds for diverse subjects like sign language and interpreting so it was a great opportunity to experiment with the technology.

In our COIL project, a group of about twenty students (four from Limerick and the rest from Oslo) discussed the future of education and how we imagined technology-enhanced education would develop in the next five to ten years. Following the initial introduction meeting with our lecturers, we meet alone in Teams to discuss our ideas. After brainstorming possible topics, we then divided ourselves into groups of two or three to produce a slide on our chosen theme. The international aspect of COIL was emphasized by the fact that I could attend a meeting while on holiday in Scotland, and my Norwegian partner attended one meeting while visiting family in Turkey. Once we were happy with our slides, we submitted them to be uploaded into the virtual world and then met the day before our big presentation to practice.

As far as the international element is concerned, working with the Norwegian students was a pleasure. Having shared a flat with some Norwegians as an undergraduate, I knew that our partners' English would be excellent, and it was. Only one hour of time difference between Ireland and Norway also made it very easy to arrange meetings. The Norwegian students also seemed to be well-organised and focussed on getting the most out of the project. This might also have been due to the fact that most of them were mature students who already had experience working in the real world.

The technology itself was a little bit more complicated. Going by the huge array of menu items and controls, Firestorm is obviously a very powerful tool with lots of possibilities. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to master anything else beyond basic movement and chatting. The way that the software handles PowerPoint presentations also meant that they were shown purely as individual still images, and it wasn't possible to include animations or other effects. When we gave our final presentation, we also had a problem with the audio and couldn't be heard or hear what the other group was saying. This led to them (thankfully for us) repeating their presentation.

As a virtual experience, I did still feel a bit disconnected from the experience and not immersed in it. Perhaps this was because I was still getting used to the controls and the environment. I think if I had been using it from a first-person perspective with a virtual reality headset, the feeling of actually being there would have been more convincing. Watching the presentations on a smaller board within a virtual environment was also not as satisfying as watching them full-screen like in a typical video conferencing tool. I also didn't have the feeling that the presenter was really addressing me directly because it is difficult to arrange the avatars and camera so that you can face the audience but also still view your own slide. Perhaps future versions of the software can improve on that.

Despite these criticisms, participating in the COIL project was an interesting and rewarding experience. I can definitely see potential for the technology and meeting other students was very interesting too. I hope the project continues, and other students get to learn collaboratively online too.

MA Technical Communication & E-Learning: On Reflection

As the semester draws to a close, it is time for me to look back on my student experience as a whole and reflect on what I have learnt, what I liked and what I didn't like so much. Firstly, of course, it has to be said that there are the personal opinions of only one student and all of my fellow students are from different backgrounds with different levels of experience in Technical Communication and E-Learning. To put this into my personal context, I am a male in his late 40s, working full-time in higher education, studying part-time and trying to fit in everything required alongside family life, hobbies and additional work projects. Just like everyone else, that profile makes me unique so getting a consensus from the cohort will probably be impossible, but maybe there are some things we all agree on.

The curriculum of the MA Technical Communication & E-Learning degree combines modules covering two different, but related, fields into one program:

Technical Communication

Principles of Professional and Technical Communication and Information Design

Theory of Technical Communication

Workplace Issues in Technical and Professional Communication

E-Learning

Instructional Design

Interactive Courseware Workshop

E-Learning Theories and Practices

Learning and Collaboration Technologies

In addition, there is one module covering both areas "Research Methods in Technical Communication and E-Learning" and of course the final dissertation or project.

Adding together, this means the degree includes 27 ECTS of technical communication subjects, 30 ECTS of E-Learning modules, and 3 ECTS which cover both. Personally, and probably because I already have some experience in E-Learning, I would have loved to have had more content relating to Technical Communication. I can quite imagine that someone who had a background in technical communication would have exactly the opposite wish and want more content on E-Learning instead.

Right from the very first module, "Principles of Professional and Technical Communication and Information Design" I was learning about new theories and in the assessments also putting them into practice. I have enjoyed writing since I was in school, and when I have time still like to write flash fiction as a creative outlet and a way to relax. Technical writing isn't quite the same, but it still feels like a creative process, and I really enjoyed it. As a lecturer teaching English as a foreign language, I also found it great to metaphorically "sharpen my pencil" and think about my own writing and what I can do to improve it. The assignment rewriting a school letter demonstrated that technical writing is really everywhere, and redesigning the safety instructions for a thermal mug was a great experience too.

The module title "Workplace Issues in Technical and Professional Communication" didn't really give away too much about the actual contents, but I really enjoyed the chance to interview someone actually working in the area, especially because this is something I wouldn't have been able to do so easily otherwise. Before I started this course, I didn't know anyone personally working in technical communication, but now I know several.

As far as E-Learning goes, I really enjoyed working with Articulate Storyline. My previous E-Learning experience was only using the built-in functions of an LMS which seems quite different from the "corporate" world of E-Learning. If it had been possible, I would really have liked to attend a workshop in person. It would also have been great to get a student licence for Storyline, rather than repeatedly using 30-day trial versions for my assignment. This added additional stress and time-pressure which could have been avoided. "E-Learning Theories and Practices" is one of the final modules this semester and for a part-time student it seems out of place in the fourth or four semesters. It covers a lot of basic theory and technologies, which I think would have been better to cover in the first or second semester. On the other hand, the assignment to create a portfolio is only possible now that we have finished everything else, so I think a module or curriculum redesign would be required to make this more logical.

All-in-all, I have really enjoyed this program. My only regret is a personal one rather than to do with the degree itself. Working full-time and having various side projects meant I never had time to do all the additional reading, which I am sure would have added even more to my appreciation of the subjects. I hope that once I have finished the degree entirely, I will be able to find time to revisit some of the resources made available to us.

On reflection, this degree program was definitely a good choice and has opened my eyes to the possibility of a career in technical communication and has shown me E-Learning in a new light too. It has definitely already informed my teaching practice and I am sure I will continue to use my new knowledge and skills in the future too.

AI: The Future of Technical Communication and E-Learning?

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality..." Freddie Mercury probably wasn't thinking about artificial intelligence when he sang those lines in 1975's Bohemian Rhapsody, but in the era of fake news and artificially generated content, the time is coming when we will have to ask ourselves if something we are watching or hearing is actually real or not - and if that even matters.

When I began the MA Technical Communication and E-Learning program, artificial intelligence was still a niche area most of interest to computer scientists and researchers. However, in the last semester, the launch of ChatGPT has brought AI right into the spotlight, with newspaper articles and TV features examining the potential and risks the technology presents. Experts in the areas of technical communication and E-learning have also been giving their opinions, so I decided it was right to consider that in this blog post, even though it wasn't a topic of the degree program. So how can these AI tools be used?

Ch'ng (2023) lists three possible uses of ChatGPT for teaching and learning:

• Content generation
• Virtual tutoring
• Language learning

So far, most of the examples I have seen fall under the category content generation, like this video:

This is an animated avatar created using two, freely available websites: http://bigspeak.ai which I used to produce the audio, and https://d-id.com which I used to produce the actual avatar. Firstly, I wrote a script which I entered at bigspeak, which converted it into an mp3 file in my chosen voice. Then I went to d-id, chose an avatar and the video was automatically generated for me. The entire process took only a few minutes from start to finish. Due to the restrictions of the free versions, this video is short, but it would not have required much additional work (or expense) to produce a longer version. This avatar obviously has a cartoony appearance, but there are other tools which offer much more lifelike models.

From the teaching perspective, Singh (undated) and Ch'ng (2023) agree that tools like ChatGPT can also be used to produce lesson plans or a tutorial. For example, the image below shows part of the results of my prompt "Create a short tutorial on how to write an academic paper". In less than a minute, ChatGPT produced a 10-step plan which seems logically structured and academically sound.

There are, of course, also fears about the use of AI tools and Ch'ng lists three challenges they present:

• Reduction in independent thinking
• Copyright abuse and plagiarism
• Misuse or mishandling of data

At least in Germany, the biggest fear so far has been about plagiarism and students misusing ChatGPT to write assignments. When I began my original Bachelor degree in 1991, the internet hadn't really become well-known and we didn't use it beyond sending emails. However, we were taught the principles of Boolean operators to enable us to search the library's CD-ROM databases successfully. It now seems that learning how to use and detect the use of AI tools will be the 21st century equivalent digital competence which both technical communicators, educators and users will need to acquire. Maybe I should have even asked ChatGPT to produce a guide on how to use it as a student?

For me, developments like ChatGPT emphasize how rapidly technology is progressing and how important it is for us as humans to also keep developing the competencies necessary to successfully deal with them. I am sure that these tools will appear in some form in our MA Technical Communication & E-Learning degree in the near future. And both teachers and students will benefit from it, if we can embrace its positive potential.

Sources:

Ch'ng, L.K. (2023). A New Buzz in Teaching & Learning:ChatGPT. https://elearningindustry.com/a-new-buzz-in-teaching-and-learning-chatgpt [Accessed 22.03.2023]

Singh, H. (Undated). How to Use Chat GPT for eLearning? https://www.instancy.com/how-to-use-chat-gpt-for-elearning/ [Accessed 22.03.2023]

Learning to Articulate

Before I started this degree program, most of the e-learning content I had created was made within my institution's Moodle platform. We typically create a course to cover 15 weeks and 6-ECTS of content, usually divided up either by topic or by the weeks of the semester. The video below is an example of a typical course structure. I use my courses to distribute the PowerPoint slides I used in class for anyone who wasn't there or wants to look at them again, to provide audio, video or reading material, and for interactive activities like polls, uploading assignments or self-assessment quizzes.

Typical Moodle Course (Own illustration)

My own experience of being trained for previous jobs and preparing teaching material myself already showed me that training and education are two different things, but I had never really considered the theoretical differences between the two. This article at keydifferences.com gave me a good overview of the differences and included the summary in the table below:

Source: Surbhi S, keydifferences.com

For my assignment in module EL6072 Interactive Courseware Workshop I decided it made most sense to create a smaller, more self-contained training module than the types of learning material I usually create. I chose to create a module which should prepare incoming students for an exchange semester at our institution, and therefore had a very specific and limited purpose. I had never used a program like Articulate Storyline before, but the fact it could import PowerPoint slides made it much easier to use than it first appeared. Just starting at the blank canvas of an empty project is quite intimidating. Once I had decided on the five sections I wanted to include, I set about creating the content and designing the slides I wanted to make it possible to dip in and out of the module in any order and to make it more personal by including a function to enter your name at the beginning of the course. This was then used in feedback throughout.

Slideshow of Articulate Storyline Course (Own illustration)

Through reading some online help and watching tutorial videos, after a short time (and two 30-day Articulate trial periods) I was able to create a module which included:

• checklists
• embedded audio and video
• multiple choice quiz
• external links
• user feedback

I was impressed by how simple and powerful Articulate is, but from watching the tutorials and looking at some examples, it is obvious how much more could be done with the software. The only drawback is the price, but I have managed to persuade my employer to pay for a licence, so I look forward to using Storyline more in the future. Even if I am just creating elearning in our Moodle platform - doing this module and using Articulate has given me an insight into different forms of elearning and will definitely influence how I think about my creative process. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to create more standalone elearning courses again soon to really explore all the possibilities!

Sources

Surbhi S. (2017) Difference between Education and Training. https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-training-and-education.html [Accessed 14.03.2023]

Becoming a model instructional designer

Possibly Benjamin Franklin or maybe Winston Churchill said that "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail". This is the kind of apocryphal quote the internet is full of, but it does seem to make sense. Especially when applied to the areas of teaching and instructional design. When I initially did my training as a TEFL teacher, we learnt all about lesson plans and how to set out objectives and appropriate evaluations. Ever since then, I have however very rarely written formal lesson plans and instead prefer to work to a rough guideline and my experience of what has worked in the past. Leaving this room for flexibility also allows me to react spontaneously to my students, for example, going into more depth on something that is of particular interest or slowing the pace down if a concept needs more explanation.

Somewhere along the way I started adding online content to my teaching and when the Corona pandemic started online was the only teaching option I had. I became familiar with the ADDIE model which I used to help create elearning material.

The ADDIE Instructional Design Model (Own illustration)

Of course, I was aware that there were other models for instructional design but I hadn't really examined any of them in detail until this course, when I was introduced to the ASSURE model.

The ASSURE Instructional Design Model (Own illustration)

My experience has shown that a good model to base your learning design on is vital. When a student is learning on their own, I am not there to answer their questions or react spontaneously if they have trouble understanding something. Elearning platforms aren’t intelligent enough (yet) to replace human teachers but if I can design my elearning as well as possible, I can make sure that potential problems are dealt with in advance and the students have a clear idea of what it is they are expected to do.

I especially like the ASSURE model because it forces me to focus on the activities that the learners should be doing. It emphasises that learning is not just a one-way process where I pour knowledge into an empty jug. Instead learners need activities to test out their new knowledge, to interact with their classmates and to be sure that they have really understood. This new perspective is one of the big wins for me from the course and something I will be trying to including in all of my future instructional design.

Meeting the Experts: Workplace Issues in Technical and Professional Communication

In the second semester of my Technical Communication and E-Learning degree, I took module TW5212, "Workplace Issues in Technical and Professional Communication". Part of the assessment for this module was to find and interview someone who was professionally involved in the field of technical communication. Unfortunately, at my current work we don't have anyone who works in this area at all, so I did some brainstorming to think of someone who could possibly help, leading me to my friend Laura, who at the time worked in the marketing department of Oventrop, a locally-based (but international) manufacturer of systems for heating, cooling and drinking water systems. She in turn put me in touch with her colleague, Stephan, who was the company's Content & PR Manager.

Source: https://www.oventrop.com/en-GB/companynews/aboutus/whoweare [Accessed 5.3.2023]

Even though we had never met before, Stephan was kind enough to agree to an interview, which we carried out in Teams due to the lockdown that was in place at the time. A face-to-face meeting over a cup of tea and some biscuits with the chance to actually see his workplace would have been more relaxing and rewarding, but that was unfortunately not possible. Although the company has now been in business for over 170 years and has over 1,000 employees at their headquarters in Germany alone, they do not employ anyone to work solely as a technical writer. Stephen explained to me that as the head of the Marketing and Product Management team he is primarily responsible for marketing and PR texts like brochures and press releases, but also works on more technical material like handbooks and instructions when required. Although he didn’t have any specific training in technical communication, Stephan had worked in communications before he joined Oventrop and had what seems to me to be one big advantage: as a student he had worked on the shop floor manufacturing products, so he had a good understanding of what the company did and how their products are constructed. Maybe even more importantly, he knew a lot of his technical colleagues personally and wasn’t afraid to ask them “stupid” questions.

source: https://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/handtypingjpg [Accessed 5.3.2023]

My interview was only short, but two main things stood out for me. Even companies that seem relatively large may not have technical communication as a specialist role within the organization – it is just another string that communication professionals should add to their bow. He also confirmed that technical communication is only going to become more important, his company’s products are becoming more complex and having good communication could be the unique selling point over their rivals. As a student of technical communication, these are both reassuring that this is an area with a positive future and one that it is possible to break into even without a lot of experience.

Putting the student at the centre of learning

Throughout my degree program I have experimented with new technologies like podcasts, wikis, virtual worlds and elearning modules created using professional authoring tools. The problem with this is that it is all too easy to think about the technology first (be technology-led) and consider the needs of the learner (being student-centred) as an afterthought. One good way to recentre and refocus on what the teacher and learner require is to revisit Bloom's famous taxonomy:

Traditionally, these levels are considered to range in complexity starting with Remembering and then moving through Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluation and ending with Creating. Thankfully, some learning technologists like Ron Carranza have kindly connected this taxonomy to some typical elearning technologies to clearly show which tools are best suited to which levels of the taxonomy:

Tempting though all these new technologies are, on reflection, we must remember that they are also not without their challenges, both for the learners and for the teachers using them. Firstly, we have to remember that even though are learners are “digital natives” that doesn’t mean that they have previously knowledge of these tools or naturally know how to use them. For teachers, setting up a digital resource may require more preparation than just preparing a worksheet or making a lesson plan. The finished results may also require more effort to correct. An automated test in a learning management system is great if you use multiple-choice questions but if you use open answers you have to prepare the system that “50”, “fifty” and “Fifty” may all be acceptable answers to the same questions. The rapid developments in artificial intelligence will probably resolve this issue in the future but until then we still need teachers who can consider all the possibilities and put in the effort to make these systems work. Firstly, though, we have to think about whether they actually offer an added value and aren’t just a flashy distraction. That is when we will really have learner-centred elearning and deliver our students the best possible examples of technology-enhanced education.

Sources:

Neelakandan, N. (2019). Applying the Basics of Bloom's Taxonomy to eLearning. https://elearningindustry.com/applying-blooms-taxonomy-basics-elearning

Sneed, O. (2016). Integrating Technology with Bloom's Taxonomy. https://teachonline.asu.edu/2016/05/integrating-technology-blooms-taxonomy/