Thursday 10 May 2012

R2D2 - a good Bonk re-think before transferring courses online

The polls were well underway by the time of the official start of Curtis Bonk's second live session on #bonkopen. Again, this was a good way of getting involvement from 275 participants (later 324 or so), with a chorus of bonk-prattle where Dr Bonk picked out individuals,  perhaps mentioning their country and their response, in an endless stream of connection. Although there were repeated reminders, many continued to place their response on the chat stream, with the effect that this moved so rapidly that it was difficult to follow. But there was enough entertainment from Dr Bonk on the audio and video streams to make up for this.
Today's subject was the R2D2 model (or Framework).
I am confused about what it is. No, I don't think that it is a astromech droid/theromcapsulary dehousing asister, but whether it is a pedagogy.
Bonk stated that it was NOT a learning styles model (as a psychologist he does not believe in learning styles), NOT an instructional design, but a way to divide up what you do on online learning and teaching.
So it is an aide-memoir, a sort of checklist of good practices, particularly for engaging students with digital technologies, to cause learning. A sort of VAK (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) approach but including reading and reflection - two prime assets/learning methods for online learning.
The R2D2 model was illustrated by this diagram from his slide show, again available before the session, so it was easy to follow and useful for those who reported delays in the showing of some slides during the actual session. I am linking the slides here but it is in the CourseSite so can only be accessed by password - a shame since the R2D2 model is hardly worthwhile without it.

I will try to expand on these bare bones from what was presented.
R2D2 Model:
Phew!
My initial thoughts on the R2D2 aide memoir are that it is useful in the sense of insisting on a complete re-write and re-think when transferring from face to face class courses. Too often "instruction" is transferred from F2F to online without much thought. It NEEDS a total re-think and this is a good reminder of the ways that it can be done.
#change11

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