Let’s get phygital!

This weekend, I attended the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) that was being held in Denver, CO. During the conference, I attended a bunch of sessions and panel discussions and got to co-present a session with a colleague. I usually come back from conferences with my head thinking about new ideas or concepts and this weekend was no different. I anticipate that I’ll be spending the next post or two unpacking different things I encountered at the conference, but this week, I decided to get “phygital.”

Even though Grammarly is trying to correct me every time I type it, phygital is a word. I heard the word for the first time this weekend and immediately started searching for what the word meant and how it applied to education. The best definition I could find referred to phygital as “a blend of physical and digital environments.” Educationally, this would mean that a phygital space would mix physical, face-to-face learning with some online components. To me, that sounded a lot like other terminology that educators have been using for a while. Blended learning. Hybrid learning. Is phygital just a rebranding of those terms? I didn’t know, so I went to one of my new favorite AI tools (Perplexity) for help. Perplexity acts a lot like ChatGPT but it cites its sources. This helps to reduce the hallucinations and misinformation that some of the other AI chatbots are prone to offer. So, I asked Perplexity, “What does phygital mean in the context of teaching and learning? How does it differ from blended or hybrid learning?” And here’s how Perplexity responded:

“In the context of teaching and learning, ‘phygital’ refers to the integration of physical and digital elements to create a seamless learning experience. It involves tightly integrating digital activities into face-to-face sequences to enhance the learning process. Phygital learning aims to bridge the gap between traditional classroom settings and digital technology, allowing for a more engaging and effective learning environment.

Phygital learning differs from blended or hybrid learning in that it goes beyond simply combining traditional and digital learning experiences. While blended or hybrid learning involves a mix of in-person and online instruction, phygital learning specifically focuses on tightly integrating digital activities into face-to-face sequences to create a more dynamic and effective learning environment.”

While this description helped to clarify some things, I was still struggling to see how this was different from blended or hybrid learning. So, I asked a follow-up question. I asked, “Can you provide an example of a phygital learning activity in a science classroom?” Here’s how Perplexity responded:

“An example of a phygital learning activity in a science classroom is the use of augmented reality (AR) simulations to conduct virtual science experiments. This approach allows students to engage in hands-on learning experiences by interacting with digital elements superimposed on the real world, such as observing and manipulating virtual chemical reactions or exploring complex scientific concepts through interactive AR applications. By integrating AR simulations into the science curriculum, students can gain a deeper understanding of scientific principles and phenomena while fostering sustained interest and engagement in the subject.”

This made it clearer. In most cases, blended (or hybrid) learning involves either interacting with face-to-face instruction OR online instruction, phygital suggests that we can create learning environments where those traditional distinctions no longer exist. Students can interact with the physical and the digital at the same time, with one enhancing and supporting the other. While I’m still wrapping my head around this new terminology, I think the term “phygital” offers new ways to describe some of the learning experiences on the horizon as the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence continues to expand.

References (from Perplexity):

Unlocking the Potential of Phygital Learning and Education
Phygital Learning – Ahead of the Curve
Phygital Learning: Bridging Physical and Digital Education

Resisting the Panopticon

The spring semester started recently. Usually, when a new semester starts, I’ll wait a day or so and look into my online classes to make sure everyone has logged in and started to access the content available to them. My first assignments are not often due until five or six days into the class, but I want to make sure students haven’t experienced any technical challenges accessing my classes. If I see that a student hasn’t logged in or begun checking out the content, I’ll send a quick email asking if they’re having any difficulties and offer my assistance. After a misstep a few years ago, I now frame my emails from a place of compassion and empathy. I’ll start with something like “I saw that you haven’t logged into our course shell yet and I’m checking in to see if everything is okay…”  I sent a few of those emails earlier this morning to the students who haven’t logged in yet.

I feel like this is a good time to be completely honest. Students’ technical challenges aren’t the only reason I send those emails. I want the students to know that I’m present in the class. I want to communicate that students’ participation and involvement are important to me. I want to motivate students to take the class seriously and to see me as a resource if they’re struggling.

But I also have concerns about what else the emails may communicate. I worry that I’m communicating a larger surveillance culture in my online classes where students’ access and engagement are regularly tracked. If you haven’t spent a lot of time using a learning management system (LMS), you may not know the amount of data an LMS collects on its users or what is available to an instructor. With a few clicks, I can see when my students have logged in, where they’ve logged in from, which course content they accessed, how long they’ve spent on course items, and a whole lot more. With all of the data the LMS collects and offers to instructors, it’s almost like they’ve created a digital panopticon for online learning. “Panopticon” is one of the terms that come up in a lot of dystopian novels. It describes some architectural design where people can be monitored from a single vantage point. The concept was created by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century as an innovative way to design prisoners. In his design, one guard could monitor a group of prisoners from a single location. While an individual prisoner wouldn’t know whether they were actually being watched at any given, the design afforded the possibility that it could occur, which motivated prisoners to act as if they were being monitored.

While the data is available to monitor students’ activity in online classes, I’m going to urge instructors to resist the digital panopticon that the LMS offers. Sure, the data can come in handy when a student has had difficulty with a course assignment or accessing some item. It can also be valuable in situations involving academic dishonesty. An overreliance and overuse of the data, however, can create an environment of surveillance and control that can be demotivating for a lot of learners. It can also undermine trust, which should be one of the foundational elements of any learning environment.

So while I’ve sent out emails to check on the students who haven’t logged into my classes, I doubt I’ll need to look at the LMS data very often this semester. Unless I encounter a struggling student, regularly interacting with the data (and reacting/responding) isn’t going to foster the type of learning culture I want in my classroom.

The Paradox of Flexibility

I’m taking a few weeks off to spend some time with my family and I’m rerunning some recent posts. This one was originally shared in May 2022. As I’m finishing up teaching classes this summer, I thought it would provide nice reflective bookend. Enjoy!

The summer semester started this week and I’m teaching two graduate classes online this semester. I’ve spent the last week or two preparing to get the courses ready for the first day of class. This preparation process usually involves copying and revising materials from previous iterations of the courses. I’ll move around modules, change deadlines, and retool different assignments. I try to get most of the course built before the first day of class so that I can focus on facilitation once the class has begun. I’ve used this metaphor before, but I view online teacher like planning to host a party. If you prepare a lot of the stuff in advance, you can enjoy the party once it’s happening. The same goes for online teaching. When an online teacher prepares a lot of their course in advance, they can focus more on the facilitation aspects once the course has begun. Online teaching as party planning. Or at least that’s the metaphor I’ve used in the past.

But I came across a term recently that has me re-evaluating that metaphor. A student’s paper referenced “the paradox of flexibility” of asynchronous class and I felt the need to find the original paper where the phrase was used. After some quick Google searching, I found a 2018 study by Janine Delahunty in Linguistics and Education. Delahunty uses the phrase early in the paper when she explains the challenges with asynchronous discussion boards. Delahunty writes:

“While the ‘anywhere, anytime’ mode of delivery can attract interest from prospective students, this may have implications for the sociality of ‘learning to connect’, or the opportunities to develop a sense of belonging to a learning community through quality in relationships between group members who may never (physically) meet.” (pg. 12).

Delahunty elaborates by saying that the flexibility of asynchronous delivery “provides just as many opportunities not to engage with others as it does to engage.” Which is where the “paradox of flexibility” emerges. While students can choose to participate whenever is best for them, that flexibility can inhibit the formation of a cohesive learning community where social interaction is fostered. If you believe (as I do) that learning is dependent on social interaction, the flexibility of asynchronous classes can also impact the overall learning experience. Hence the paradox.

So, while I like to describe my online class preparation as planning for a party, I’ve planned “a party” where students attend and participate flexibly and on their own schedules. Which doesn’t make it seem like much of a party at all. Or at least not one where everyone is gathered and interacting at once. That’s not to mean that asynchronous classes can’t be valuable learning experiences for students. I feel that they are. It’s just that I have to more fully accept that how I describe and visualize them may be a far way removed from how they actually are.

Citations:

Delahunty, J. (2018). Connecting to learn, learning to connect: Thinking together in asynchronous forum discussion. Linguistics and Education, 46, 12-22.

Being Social

I’m serving on a doctoral candidate’s dissertation committee this semester and in preparation for their upcoming defense, I was reading the final draft of their dissertation. As I was reading through the candidate’s literature review, I realized that as educators and researchers, we use a lot of terminology to describe different concepts about student learning and the classroom environment. For example, I consider myself to be a social constructivist. This means that I believe that social interaction is a key component of learning. For this type of learning to happen, classroom environments must have some collaborative components where learners engage with their peers and knowledgeable others (teachers) who can help them develop their understanding through social meaning making. But when we dig into the different ways to conceptualize the factors that may play a role, we introduce terms like social presence, social connectedness, and so on. While those words may seem like they’re synonymous, they’re subtly different and describe different concepts. They also have different research traditions and can play different roles in fostering a social environment for learning. I thought I’d dedicate a post describing some of the differences. Here goes.

Social Presence: Short et al. (1976) first defined the concept as the “degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (p. 65). When applied to online learning, social presence is a student’s perception of the existence of ‘others’ in the virtual environment. Social presence is also part of the Community of Inquiry model, introduced by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001). In their framework, they define social presence as the ability to interact with others in a meaningful way.

Social Connectedness: Social connectedness refers to the degree to which individuals feel they are part of a community, have a sense of belonging, and feel connected to others around them. It involves a feeling of being included, valued, and supported by others, and having a network of relationships that provide emotional and social support. (Lee & Robbins, 1995).

While I’m talking about these concepts as separate entities, they’re related. Social presence is an assessment of the perception of the other participants within the space, whereas connectedness is an emotional experience, evoked by, but independent of, the other’s presence. A person can sense the presence of others, but not necessarily feel connected to others. For example, I can see friends’ posts on Instagram or Facebook and recognize their presence. But without interacting with them in that space, I won’t feel a sense of belonging or connected to them. In this example, there is social presence but no social connectedness. But there can also be social connectedness without a sense of presence. For example, let’s say I get a letter in the mail from a friend with whom I’ve lost touch. In this case, I can experience social connectedness, without necessarily sensing their social presence.

So, how does this relate to our classrooms? While I think these can naturally play out in our physical classroom spaces, the real challenge is fostering these in our online learning spaces. In those spaces, instructors need to design for it and facilitate it. They don’t happen without someone cultivating it. And that’s one of the hardest parts of being a social constructivist working in online spaces.

References:
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Lee, R. M., & Robbins, S. B. (1995). Measuring belongingness: The Social Connectedness and the Social Assurance scales. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 42(2), 232–241.

Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. Toronto; London; New York: Wiley.

A Case for Quality Course Design

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post detailing my institution’s efforts to qualify educators to teach online. Our college was piloting a peer review system where faculty would assess each other’s courses using SUNY’s Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR) which specifically targets quality online course design. To prepare for the peer review process, my dean asked each of us to self-assess one of our courses and to identify areas for improvement and growth. I chose to review a graduate course that I was currently teaching. The course is a seven-week class that focuses on tools and technologies for online teaching in K-12 environments. I figured if I was teaching a class on online teaching, I should assess whether my course design was high quality or not. And the OSCQR rubric helped me to that end. I’ve already identified several areas for improvement for the next time I teach this class.

I’m sure some folks look at the exhaustive list of standards in the OSCQR rubric and wonder whether all that stuff is necessary. The rubric attends to design and layout, interaction, technology and tools, and a host of other areas. Is that stuff really ALL important? Does it really have an impact? While the authors of the OSCQR offer research to back up the elements they have included in the rubric, I thought I’d share a different perspective. The graduate course I assessed using the OSCQR rubric ended this weekend. Sunday afternoon, I received an email from a student in the class. Here’s what they wrote:

“This course was my first one back after having a baby last fall and I felt that this course was organized in a manner that was manageable for me as I balanced going back to work full time, having a toddler, and taking graduate classes. Your outlining of class expectations was so clear and easy to follow, your course readings and assignments were meaningful yet manageable, and having the set schedule of module due dates and discussion reply due dates was much appreciated.

Even more so than that, everything I learned in this course I felt was relevant to my own classroom practices and I was able to start implementing many of the elements almost immediately. Many others will be implemented moving forward as well. Although this was an elective course for my program, it is definitely one I will recommend others to take if they are able.

Thank you for all of the great resources and ideas to ensure my students are getting the best possible online instruction I can offer!

I do not feel the post-course survey would have quite gotten my appreciation across, hence the email. Thanks again!”

Just to be clear, I’m not sharing this email to pat myself on the back or anything. Instead, I’m offering it as a rationale for quality online instruction. When a rubric like the OSCQR offers standards like “A logical, consistent, and uncluttered layout is established.” or “Course objectives/outcomes are clearly defined, measurable, and aligned to learning activities and assessments,” this student is the reason why. Or maybe I should say students like this one are the reason why. I can’t imagine the amount of juggling and multitasking that my students have to do to navigate their personal, professional, and educational lives. If quality online course design can help to reduce some of the barriers to learning, I’m game.