Exploring blogs as a learning platform
Another excellent Edublogs.org weblog
Jun
04
ET507 Assignment: Applications of RSS in E-learning
- Effortless way of finding learning resources on a particular topic, filter them and make them available to your students. The instructor could refine search terms in his RSS reader until he finds an appropriate number and list of resources for the course. He then asks his students to add this to their RSS reader – students then automatically updated with more resources and the instructor may even ask students to comment on some of these resources in relation to the topics being discussed in the class.
- Many ideas and practical uses of RSS are provided in RSS Ideas for Educators. For example, in the course I am designing on Using Moodle tools to manage a course, I could find Moodle tutorials from video/screencast feeds and get my students to be automatically updated from them. The main fear that I have with RSS feeds, in general, specially in it’s uses as aggregation of websites, news and weblogs (RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators – pgs 6-10) is overwhelming the student with too much information and unable to focus the direction of learning. Personally, I would prefer to use RSS as a research tool that allows me to review information in different media and different sources in one location, filter them and selectively provide them to my students in my LMS or Blog.
- As pointed out by Downes (Introduction to RSS feeds for educational designers), being able to syndicate a weblog distinguishes from a website (hence why several school sites have started using weblogs as their main site (RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators – pgs 20). One of the difficulties of online learning is the disconnect that can happen due to the fact that the student is often an adult learner having a full-time job and many other tasks to manage. If a weblog can be designed to act as the reminder and task list for the students such that it’s role is like a “coach”, the student can subscribe to this RSS through the student’s most effective mode of communication (For some it could be cell phone, others could be i-Pod, and others it could be online aggregator).
- For a directed task like a group reseach project, I see RSS aggregation being useful – again here, I think that the instructor needs to provide an intial filter on which sources to aggregate from.
- Overall, I see the advantages of RSS being more “personal” for the instructor’s effectiveness of managing, filtering, keeping up-to-date with the huge amount of information available on the web.
That’s all for now 
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June 5th, 2009 at 2:45 am
You raise some interesting points here.
I am most curious about the perspective from which you wrote this post. It seems that in your write-up, the instructor is largely the center of the learning, rather than the students. While I think it’s important for the instructor to offer support and coaching, as you mentioned, if the intstructor doesn’t subscribe to using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom, I still believe the Web 2.0 tools are useful for the student who can, then, create his/her own network.
It’s nice if an instructor does it for them, but it cannot be instructor-dependent. Students must construct their own way of knowing. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating clones of instructors, and we don’t want that.
Just out of curiosity, do you think your students would use RSS, for example, if you were not using it in your class (if it weren’t a requirement)?
June 5th, 2009 at 3:10 am
I think the main point I was trying to make is that “allowing” the student to “navigate” and “construct” their own knowledge when they are just starting the path of knowledge (for e.g. courses at yr 1 and 2 of undergrad, even adults who are being exposed to a new science/technique), there needs to be lots of scaffolding and guidance from the instructor which is why I was pointing to a “instructor/expert” focus initially. However, as you mentioned, these scaffolds need to be slowly removed and the model of learning transitioned from instructor-centered to instructor as a coach/advisor so that the student can run by himself/herself
Hence I am neither for or against instructor-centered and/or student-centered learning. I just believe that they both have their places in all modes of learning (face to face, online or blended)
Regarding your question, it would depend I think with the level of exposure the student has with technology. I think that with the current generation (15-25), there would be a strong percentage of people (in first world countries) who would have subscribed to RSS feeds – I’m not sure about that though: It would be more likely that they used social network tools like facebook and twitter than RSS.
I think that if I introduced the concept and it’s advantages in terms of “one-stop” shop information, my students would want to use it.
Hope this answers your question
June 6th, 2009 at 10:08 am
It would be great to be your student in you online course on how to use Moodle!
As to your point 2, I agree that overwhelming students with too much information could result frustrating for them, in that they would not know how to manage all those learning materials. I understand that our enthusiasm as teachers could lead us to always update them with new content. However, I believe that the input to our students should be tailored according to the duration of the course and the learning outcomes (as we have just learnt).
Also, I do not know if this might work. However, you could have your students search for video/screencast feeds related to the Moodle platform and its usage. Thereafter, they could be assigned to post them on Moodle. In doing that, they would be at the centre of the learning process.
June 6th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I think if soial networking tools are planned to be used in a course, RSS will be considered essential. By this, it can indirectly help students to focus on their learning and not get distracting except when there are updates. Also, if a virtual learning environment is set it usually grows fast and navigation through it might become really distracting, having RSS set by students on areas he/she wish to be updated with might help him/her more. This is in addition to the other applications of RSS.
June 7th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Amal: I like your point about using RSS to manage the potential overflow of content inside a VLE. The question will be “how much of the content in a VLE” can be made RSS’able
For example, in Moodle, I don’t know how much of that is possible – worth doing some research…