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The Invisible Teacher

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 THE INVISIBLE TEACHER

Alexander G. Flor

“Who are you when you teach?”

- Mary Bart

CONTEXT

Teachers in open universities adopt teaching styles and apply pedagogies that may differ from
those in conventional classrooms. But how do they see themselves? What persona do they
assume online? Do they regard their role as similar to the traditional teacher?

For so long, the UPOU faculty’s sense of self has been a lingering question provoked into
occasional discussion but left unresolved for future articulation. One such trigger that
resulted in a brief but animated exchange was a talk delivered in the Roundtable Discussion
on Openness at the UPOU Oblation Hall in 23 August 2012. The presentation was titled, “The
Invisible Teacher.”

The narrative of the Invisible Teacher is based upon the construct that current information
and communication environments are making the traditional teacher redundant and the
traditional university irrelevant. The role of the traditional teacher diminishes within an
online classroom. Faculty members of open universities can become effective educators while
being minimally invasive of the online student's learning space. Moreover, the World Wide
Web is fast replacing the university as the repository of knowledge.

However, it is also noted that UPOU faculty may be subjecting themselves to inordinate risks
while applying open education and open access approaches in their academic work.
Colleagues from conventional universities may admonish them for being absentee teachers.
The university itself having been the traditional bastion of intellectual property rights may
not be too sympathetic to the notion of open access and open educational resources.

NARRATIVE

Introduction

Caveat. This presentation is not being delivered from the standpoint of educational
science. I claim neither expertise in education nor in educational administration. I believe,
however, that I know enough about teaching since I have been at it for the past 36 years.

This paper is framed from the perspective of informatization, an area wherein I could claim
a certain degree of proficiency as this was the topic of my dissertation conducted from
1983 to 1986. I will begin by talking about the Information Society.

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Word Cloud. What you see above is a word cloud. As you know, a word cloud is produced
by an online freeware called Wordle. You feed a document into Wordle and out comes a
word cloud shaped by the parameters that you set.

The parameters set herein were the fifteen most mentioned words in the Wikipedia entry
on the Information Society. Looking at the fifteen most cited words apparently does not do
justice to the current body of knowledge on information societies. The words economy and
economics are hardly discernable in the word cloud. Truth be told the information society
concept originated in Europe, from Austrian economists who migrated to the United
Kingdom and then to the United States just before the Second World War to avoid political
persecution. A couple of decades later in the US, they altered the name of this area of study
from knowledge economics to information economics.

The word cloud gives reference to Castells, who is now the most familiar thought leader on
the subject although he came into the scene barely fifteen years ago. The economists who
initiated the information society discourse - Hayek, Schumpeter and Machlup – published
their seminal work in the thirties and inspired American economists like Mike Porat who in
the late seventies produced his twenty-volume dissertation titled The Information Society.

What makes an information society? The technical definition of an information society is a

country that runs on an information-based economy. From a national accounting
perspective, an economy is information-based if a substantive portion of the country’s GDP
is generated by information transactions. From the point of view of labor economics, a
country is an information society when the majority of its workforce is made up of
information workers. The transformation of an agricultural or industrial society into an
information society is known as informatization.

My 1983-86 data proved that the Philippines possessed an agriculture-based economy. The
theoretical proposition adopted then was that the Philippines was an agricultural society
within the Information Age. And as such, held the wrong end of the stick.

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Today in 2012? Surprise, surprise…

The Philippines has made it to the list of nations which may be considered as information
societies. According to the Central Intelligence Agency website, our information workers
overtook our agriculture and industrial workers in 2007. I am not kidding. The CIA website
is open, if you would like to do a fact check. From its most recent figures, we now belong to
the category of countries where information labor (or services) have exceeded agricultural
and industrial labor. We are now like Singapore, or Canada, or the UK.

Openness Icons. How does all these relate to the theme of openness? The main thesis of
this talk is that openness has a direct bearing on informatization and, for that matter,
informatization has a direct influence on openness. Specifically, I submit that
informatization is bearing upon open education. Informatization is changing the way we
teach and the nature of our educational institutions.

A few more related images before we proceed.

This figure, an open padlock shaped like a small letter “a,” is the
international symbol for the open access movement.

This coat of arms, in turn, symbolizes the UK Open

University, which, according to Sir John Daniels
during the 2011 AAOU, is now the fifth highest
ranking higher educational institution in the UK,
outranking even Oxford University. It appears quality
is no longer an issue as far as the UK Open University
is concerned.

And this is the global symbol for the open educational resources
movement.

The University of Michigan has an open university

also. But instead of calling it University of Michigan
Open University (as we call ours awkwardly), it is
called Open Michigan.

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 This nomenclature was adopted by the
University of Nottingham, which is number four
in the UK. They call their open university, Open
Nottingham. Perhaps we should begin calling
ourselves Open UP instead.

…Or Open Philippines. But that’s another issue.

Turning Points

To introduce my propositions, I need to relate three events that I consider significant

markers to my sense of self as an Open University teacher. The first one, in fact, occurred a
few days before formally joining the faculty.

Good Will Hunting (Beijing to Manila, August 2002). Our last University Council meeting
coincided with my 10th year with the UP Open University. I joined UPOU in 16 August 2002.
Three days before this date, I was in a plane from Beijing to Manila, finishing up a Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) assignment with the Central
Agricultural Broadcasting and Television School of China. The school, called CABTS for
short, is arguably the largest agricultural school in the world because it enrolls more than
nine-hundred thousand students per semester as of 2002. It is, of course, an open and
distance learning school. CABTS admitted secondary school finishers of all ages and
backgrounds. It utilized broadcast media as its main delivery system. In 2002, CABTS was
in the process of migrating to online learning and I was engaged by FAO to advise them on
appropriate shifts in content formats and pedagogies.

With CABTS closely behind and UPOU directly ahead, I settled down on PAL Flight 359
where the movie Good Will Hunting was about to be shown as in-flight entertainment. The
movie was co-written and co-starred by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon way before the
former played Daredevil and the latter became Jason Bourne. Although it was released in
the 1997, I was going to view it for the first time.

Matt Damon’s character, “Will,” was an impulsive, violence-prone teenager working as a

janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also a closet mathematical
genius. Without finishing high school, he was able to solve the most complicated equations
brought before him by the MIT math professor who discovered him (played by Stellan
Skarsgard in the movie).

There was one scene in the movie that carried much resonance given my immediate ODL
past and future. This scene was inside a bar in Boston. A long-haired Harvard graduate
4
student was making fun of Will’s buddy Chuckie (played by Ben Affleck), a working class
dude pretending to be a scholar to impress one of the coeds inside the bar. The grad
student was ridiculing him in front of the girl, with intellectual jargon, which Chuckie
clearly cannot follow. Will approached the group with the intention of kicking the
obnoxious character’s butt. But instead of beating him up, he engaged the grad student in a
rapid debate on the political economy of colonial America. Will systematically creamed the
fellow, cutting down every argument that was thrown at him, pointing out the grad
student’s plagiarized ideas and humiliating him in the company of his friends (and the girl)
in the process. The last thing Will said in that scene was,

“You know what?

You just blew $150,000 on an education
that you could get for $1.50 in a public library!”
That statement was a declaration that it does not take a genius to be knowledgeable in 18th
century American political economy. It does not take a Harvard University education
either. All one needed was a public library card.

Immediately, I related the scene to my circumstances. Was independent learning (and for
that matter, ODL) written in the stars? If this was the fate of higher education then UPOU
would be right smack in the center of it. Can the public library be an alternative to a UP
education? Matt Damon’s character received his education without the benefit of an
institution with real live teachers. And to think that the movie was produced in the mid-90s
when most people read hard copies, not surfed the Web. To be riding the crest of the online
education wave was elating, to say the least.

AAOU (Manila Hotel, August 2003). Exactly a year later, August 2003, UPOU co-hosted the
Asian Association of Open Universities Annual Conference in Manila. Sir John Cleaver of the
UK Open University was one of our plenary speakers. During his talk, Sir John introduced
us to 3G (third generation) open learning or eLearning.

He enumerated the characteristics of 3G eLearning. First, 3G programs are ladderized.

Second, they have multiple entries and exits. Third, they are no longer analogous to
residential programs, meaning they are not online counterparts of face-to-face programs
but designed primarily as eLearning programs. All of our 27 or so offerings then were
merely distance versions of existing residential programs. It occurred to me that our
programs and courses that are based on or patterned after residential programs and
courses should be thrown out the window. We should be offering programs and courses
that are uniquely designed and developed for online delivery. This meant adjusting our
content formats, pedagogies and assessment models; many of which were no longer
applicable and will no longer work under eLearning conditions. It was a clear signal that
the University and its programs will soon undergo change of a turbulent and yet
exhilarating nature.

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The Big Shift (Los Baños, August 2007). Four years later, we shifted learning management
systems from the National University of Singapore’s Integrated Virtual Learning
Environment (IVLE), to the open source Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning
Environment (MOODLE). I distinctly remember what our resident MOODLE expert,
Professor Lolit Suplido, alerted us to expect. In MOODLE, she said, much of what we do as
online teachers are done before the semester, not during the semester. I think she gave a
figure, something like 70 percent of our work as online teachers should be completed
before the semester starts. That, to me, meant that as faculties-in-charge (FICs), we were
now shifting from instruction to instructional design. Our functions were transforming
from teachers to course developers. We were metamorphosing.

It was quite apparent during the first semester of academic year 2007-2008 that our roles
were indeed changing. We were not the sole authority in our online classrooms anymore.
We no longer held the traditionally revered role in the teaching-learning situation. Within
the online classroom environment, where TED Talks was just a mouse click away (the link
of which was supplied by us), there were more knowledgeable authorities that they can
listen to and actually witness. This was true even within online discussion groups where
the teacher ceased to be the god s/he was in IVLE. Remember the online discussion groups
we had in IVLE? The moment the FIC posts his/her opinion, everybody else clams up. In
MOODLE, we have lost the last word.

Propositions

Now, I would like to forward three propositions

applicable to our role as teachers in an open
university.

Firstly, the teacher is no longer the primary

authority in the classroom. Secondly, technology is
fast making the traditional teacher redundant.
Thirdly, technology is fast making the
conventional university irrelevant.

I have already discussed the first construct. Let us look at the second construct: technology
is fast making the traditional teacher redundant. I would like to relate this with something
that we have talked about informally in the past…

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The Invisible Teacher

Qualifying the Concept. If you Google the

phrase, “invisible teacher,” the number
one listed link will lead you to a book by
Dave Keeling and David Hodgson.

This book on invisible teaching has

nothing to do with open education or
MOODLE. It came out in 2011 and it deals
with residential classroom teaching skills
not with online teaching skills. It presents
“one hundred and one ways to create
energy, openness and focus in the
classroom” for primary and secondary
grade levels.

The next Google entry that you will find

on the list deals with a MOODLE
community discussion thread. This thread
also has no relation to our subject here. It
is about getting access to and entering
course sites anonymously without the
knowledge of students and colleagues.
This action, to the MOODLE community, is
called invisible teaching.

Our concept of the Invisible Teacher is more in line with a novel titled The Invisible Man.
Not the book written by H.G. Wells published in 1897 but the postmodern novel of Ralph
Elison published in 1953. In this novel, the main character is undefined. As a matter of fact,
he cannot be defined. One cannot put a finger on a protagonist whose characterization is
fragmented.

This was exactly how I found myself during that first MOODLE semester. Undefined. An
entity in the online classroom that one cannot put a finger on. Within my MOODLE space, I
was teaching some of the time but I was also learning most of the time. I was there as an
authority, yes, but my opinion mattered only to me and not to others. I was not instructing
my students on the subject matter but I was showing them how to learn the subject matter.
It came to the point that my online presence hardly made sense since they were learning
the subject without me in the equation. I thus became a non-entity in my online classroom.
In other words, I became invisible. And under these circumstances, I conducted my online
classes in succeeding semesters, initially as an experiment but eventually as a
mainstreamed “method.” In the spirit of experimentation, I ventured into documentation.

7
 Features. The class
of the Invisible
Teacher has four
main features. Our
colleague, Roel, was
one of my students
during that first
semester when
circumstances led
me to adopt this
“method,” if you
will. These features
will sound very
familiar to him.

Feature 1: A Course Site on Auto-Pilot. Firstly, there is an apparent absence of the teacher.
But let me underscore the word “apparent,” because the teacher is very much present
although his presence is not so much felt.

The online course site of the Invisible Teacher runs on autopilot with minimal intervention
from the teacher. How is this done?

As Lolit Suplido hinted, before the start of the course, every learning object, instruction or
activity is posted online. The course site is complete before Day 0. The course is not
structured according to timelines as we would ordinarily do, i.e., week 1, week 2, week 3.
The course site is structured according to units: Unit 1, Unit 2 and Unit 3. All the readings
are there, all the instructions are there, all the links are there, all the discussion boards are
up before the first day of classes.

Feature 2: Open Ended Course Calendars. Secondly, we have open-ended deadlines on

assignments. Most of my courses carry three units of credit. I assign one tutor-marked
assignment (TMA) for every unit, which may be submitted anytime within the semester,
from the start of the class until the end.

There are no deadlines. The TMAs may be submitted anytime within the semester. If the
student submits all requirements in the first two or three weeks, then s/he has completed
the course as far as I am concerned. But then if the student is predisposed to
procrastination, in spite of repeated warnings in the course site and in class advisories,
because of work, domestic responsibilities, the window to complete the course is open
until the last day of classes. This is true for discussion forums as well. An open-ended
discussion board is never closed within the semestral timeframe.

8
Furthermore, discussion forums are non-sequential-asynchronous engagements in content
and form. A student may opt to begin with Forum 3 instead of Forum 1. S/he may opt to
study the materials for Unit 3 at the start of the semester instead of beginning with Unit 1.
Downloaded materials are never studied in sequence anyway. When our students
download a document, they do not proceed chapter to chapter, page to page, or sentence to
sentence. How do they study Web content? They browse.

Similarly, one may begin studying the course material with Unit 1 and then end with the
last unit, Unit 3. But another student may begin with chapter 3 instead of unit 1, unit 2
instead of unit 1. In the spirit of openness, how they proceed is no longer my business. It is
their sole decision to make. Even the submission of TMAs need not be sequential.

Feature 3: The Availability, Discovery and Sharing of Delivery and Content Alternatives.
Alternatives are made available to the student. Submissions need not be in text alone.
Visual and aural TMAs are options open to them. Basic learning content (not merely in text
but in multimedia, when available) is prescribed by the FIC, but the student may opt to
study alternative learning content available in other Web sources. They are encouraged to
visit OER sites such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare.

This brings us to the learning log, a pedagogic tool inspired by Web 2.0 and introduced in
these online classes that make possible student generated course content. Participation in
knowledge content and knowledge building in these courses was operationalized through
the learning log device.

As mentioned, my MOODLE classroom was structured according to the number of credit

units, one unit corresponding to a major topic. I normally allot one learning log for every
unit. Within the MOODLE space, a learning log was constructed by adding a Forum activity
under the unit which may be titled as Learning Log 1, 2 or 3 depending on the unit number.
Students were then instructed to share links of online learning resources that they found
most useful for the corresponding unit. They were also encouraged to follow the links
volunteered by their classmates, study these materials and react to them. In other words,
each link shared became a discussion thread.

The learning log encouraged students to make discriminate use of the World Wide Web for
scholarly research. It enabled them to share the open educational resources they
discovered with their peers. Furthermore, it permitted open-ended discourse on these
resources many of which may be classified as fugitive or grey literature. Additionally, the
learning log provided dynamicity, recency and relevance of course content. Most of all, it
empowered serious students to learn independently.

Feature 4: Shift from competency-based to metacognitive engagement-based assessment. By

now, you would be wondering how my students are graded. Before I go into assessment,
please note that the courses that I handle are conceptual courses, not skills courses.
Furthermore, they deal with development communication, a dynamic area of study actively
transforming due to rapid changes in the development discourse and in the communication

9
environment. The ephemeral or transitory nature of devcom thought necessitates frequent
changes in cognitive outcomes and, thus, in content.

In my courses, I have shifted from competency-based to engagement-based assessment

that allows me to put MOODLE analytics into play. I would know for instance how many
times Student X has visited the site, read a post, downloaded a material, even if her
presence in the discussion forums is not felt, in short, her degree of engagement with the
learning activities and resources. I find it less critical to gauge their level of knowledge gain
compared to the degree of engagement in the course. It is the “learning to learn” or
metalearning that I would focus on rather than cognitive learning. My courses are graduate
courses anyway. And the content of the courses assigned to me - ICT4D, KM4D,
development communication - constantly change and are not cast in stone, in aeternum.
What is recognized as significant knowledge this semester may no longer be relevant next
school year. It is the shift from cognitive to metacognitive that would characterize my
assessment model.

These are the four features of the Invisible Teacher method.

From Informal Experiment to Formal Research

I am inclined to put together a

research proposal on the
Invisible Teacher method. If I do
get to write this proposal, it
would have the following
research hypotheses:

Firstly, this approach will have a

significant effect on attrition,
mortality, or the dropout rate
among open and distance
learning classes. However, the
degree of effect is dependent
upon level, content, gender and
age.

I would imagine it would be more effective in PhD classes than in undergraduate classes. In
terms of content, we cannot use this technique if the course content is on the natural and
the physical sciences, logic or languages where learning is sequential. This approach cannot
be used in mathematics, for instance, or in basic subjects where one goes about the
curriculum in a certain order. In other words, it would not be effective in basic education.

Thus, the effectiveness of this approach is directly related to the level of education. The
lower the grade level, the lower its applicability. The higher the grade level, the more
effective it becomes. The appropriateness is positively correlated to education levels. It

10
would be more appropriate to the higher levels of education, i.e., graduate school, where
the emphasis is on metalearning.

UNESCO has declared that one of our biggest responsibilities as teachers in lifelong
learning is to teach our students how to learn. I submit that this approach will teach them
how to learn independently. The problem that we face of the moment is that many are not
accustomed to this. Especially students coming from private schools, who erroneously
believe that since they pay our salaries, we teachers should shepherd them. We should hold
their hand and instruct them on everything that they need to do every step of the way. Even
if every relevant instruction has already been written down in the course guide and on the
course site, they still ask you to state it to them.

On these instances, my standard replies are: “Please read your course guide thoroughly and
completely.” “Please read your class advisories.” “I do not repeat instructions already found
in the course site since I feel that as students in an open university you should learn to
learn independently.”

Academic Dissonance

Our third and last proposition is that technologies are fast making the conventional
university irrelevant. The Chancellor has introduced us to her thoughts on the universitas
ethos. The main function of the University is social transformation even among open
universities. Nevertheless, we must note that going open carries with it much academic
dissonance.

The informatization of our economy,

society and culture has made the
deconstruction of our academic
traditions imperative. Indeed, our
academic traditions are intended for
social transformation. But they have
always been and still are very
hierarchical. The academe is structured
in tiers, i.e., tiers of actors, tiers of
disciplines, and tiers of traditions.
Between these tiers, knowledge flows
are encumbered.

Moreover, informatization is making us

rethink our scholastic values. We are
now questioning the value of
Intellectual Property Rights and are
endorsing open educational resources.
Informatization is forcing us to
reconsider our academic policies.

11
We now have tensions between: individual academic freedoms and institutional
intellectual capital; open education and pedagogic efficiencies; OER and IPR. There is a field
of study called knowledge management, which forwards that a comprehensive university is
a knowledge organization. As such, its core business is knowledge sharing and reuse. It
must champion open access and open knowledge resources. A thought leader among KM
practitioners, Peter Senge, has observed that these assumptions are often inapplicable for
contemporary academia. Unfortunately, the governance model for the university that
addresses these current tensions and academic dissonance is yet to be conceptualized.

Risky Business

Some of you have noted the subtitle of this presentation: “Risky Business”.

A not so unlikely scenario that always comes to mind is set in a Senate Budget hearing
where the UP President and the UPOU Chancellor are present, oncam, being grilled by
members of the Budget Committee. The Chair inquires why UPOU is asking for additional
budget for more teaching items when its professors are never to be found by their students,
“UPOU professors hardly interact with their students. They do not even answer their
questions. One of my staff members visited the Open University on a Monday and none of
the faculty were there, even to attend the flag ceremony. “

If the general public equates UPOU education with traditional education then we are in for
a lot of trouble. We are treading a very thin line so to speak. Open education advocacy is
risky business.

I have mentioned in an earlier

presentation that the word university is
derived from the Latin phrase
universitas magistrorium et scholarium
roughly translated as a community of
masters and scholars. In such a
community, there’s always a distinction
between masters and scholars; always a
divide between teachers and students,
between initiates and the uninitiated or
those who have never entered the
university.

The university has never been open. Traditionally it has always been elitist. This accounts
for our rituals and our symbols, our ceremonial garments and our colors. Two stripes for
the master’s degree holder and three stripes for the Ph.D. A hood to ensure anonymity, thus
highlighting the person’s ideas instead of personas. We have practiced these rituals for
hundreds of years. As the Chancellor suggested, perhaps it is time for us to explore other
rituals. Instead of a toga, we now wear a sablay, regardless of degree or station. The sablay
should then imply academic equality.
12
Informatization is fast making the traditional teacher redundant and the conventional
university irrelevant. We are actually in the course of reinventing ourselves and
transforming the university in the process.

CONVERSATION

So goes the Invisible Teacher narrative. Arguments and rebuttals sparked from the exposition
in a conversation that followed. The threads and sub-threads were condensed into discursive
points presented herein in chronological order.

On Web 2.0, User-Generated Content and other Outcomes (Jean Saludadez). The concept
of student-generated course content is parallel to user-generated Web content, the
philosophy behind Web 2.0. At the UP Open University, Alejo Espinosa introduced the
notion of applying Web 2.0 in our courses.

Author’s Rejoinder: Correct. Within the Invisible Teacher narrative, the learning log is an
operationalization of Web 2.0. Students are required to build upon the initial learning
resources and even on the learning resources posted by their classmates. To be consistent
with the course design, the learning logs had to be structured on a per unit basis. The
resources that got tagged the most eventually became part and parcel of future versions of
the course.

As to the outcomes, it may be premature to make conclusions on the hypotheses forwarded

for the suggested research. But there is one unintended outcome worth mentioning: the
timely submission of grades. In these classes, grades are primarily based on MOODLE’s
engagement analytics, not on cognitive change. It is easier to compute grades if these are
based on analytics rather than on rubrics. As pointed out for development communication
courses, in particular, it would be more appropriate to assess student engagement in
learning activities, engagement that would enable them to learn on their own about the
subject matter in the future, rather than to assess their knowledge gain, knowledge that
may eventually become obsolete in a matter of a few semesters.

On Classroom Authority (Jean Saludadez). The teacher designs the course and chooses
the initial materials and resources that are uploaded or listed in the course site. Hence, it
may be argued that the authority still rests upon the teacher and that it does not diminish
since s/he still sets the parameters for the course content. Furthermore, it is difficult to
imagine one’s role in the Open University as redundant. We may interpret this trend
instead as widening the latitude of participation in the teaching-learning situation.
Moreover, to think of the university’s role as becoming irrelevant is quite hard to swallow.
There will always be a place for the university where ideas are generated, articulated and
discussed.

Author’s Rejoinder: Considering that careers (as well as futures) are at stake in these ideas,
reactions such as Jean’s are expected. But for purposes of accuracy, it should be noted that
the presentation did not forward the propositions as absolutes. It stated that, ceteris
13
paribus, technology is fast making the traditional teacher’s role redundant and the
conventional university’s role irrelevant. UPOU is not a conventional university. Neither are
we traditional teachers unless we elect to be such in online classrooms. But the online
platform makes it imperative for us to shed our residential persona. Otherwise, we open
ourselves to this perennial indictment constructed by colleagues from conventional
universities that distance education is merely an inferior, low quality analog to residential
education.

On Technological Contradictions to Open Learning (Pat Arinto): There is a primary

distinction between our methods at the Open University and traditional teacher-directed or
teacher-centered approaches to learning. The teacher-directed approach adopts the
knowledge transmission model wherein the teacher is the source of knowledge and
information, the most classic representation of which is the lecture. In the traditional
classroom setting students do not read materials but listen to the professor. It is to the
credit of UPOU faculty that this model has not dominated our online craft. However, we
should admit that there are disciplines where this mode of teaching is appropriate.

With regard to facilitation, the teacher exercises this in traditional residential classes. We
exercise this as well as in our online classes to a high degree. We perform assessments, set
standards, and decide whether the standards have been met or not. We provide the
direction. Some of us are better at this than others, i.e., some are more facilitative than
others. But it is not the facilitation that would differentiate us from the conventional
teacher. What differentiates us is having the learner as co-teacher. That is what is really
new and none of us has gotten there yet.

In such a situation, the student produces on his own, knowledge that may be shared to
others. Some of us are attempting this but there is dissonance between the desire and
intention to do so with the practices that we are familiar with and are comfortable with.
This contradiction has not yet been resolved and it does not have to be resolved now. But it
must be acknowledged.

The problem may not be redundancy but something else. Many of us are open (or would
like to think that we are) to new ways of teaching and some of us are doing aspects of it.
However, there is a disturbing resurgence of traditional modes in open and distance
learning, which are ironically enabled by the new technologies. Web conferencing and real
time synchronous video lectures, in particular, enable and encourage the knowledge
transmission model in our online classes.

There is also the matter of design. The online platform requires us to design more than we
ever did. The traditional teacher does not design but delivers. This is another disturbing
development: the fact that we do a lot of designing and our courses are all “on the run.”

Our pedagogies may be changing but the issues remain. People are still not comfortable
with design work while teaching. The new ways require us to do that. Technologies might
be different but they serve the same purpose. All these technologies make education
mediated. We are faced with the same problems that we faced two decades ago.
14
On Negotiated Openness (Jean Saludadez). Our students would have a different
conception of openness compared to ours. Should not openness be negotiated? Should we
not uphold a definition that is negotiated between the student and the university?

Gigi Alfonso’s Response: Openness as we practice it here is really negotiated. But at the
same time, we are shaping openness since we consider ODL as a public service. Combining
ODL with eLearning increases the potential of openness and accessibility. When we put the
two together we become faithful to the ideals of universitas, i.e., the framework of learning
for social transformation. As we explore this new openness spawned by new technologies,
we frame ourselves and our university as an instrument of social transformation, always
thinking of the community, the nation and the world.

On Instructional Design Capacities (Cesar Luna): Effective learning materials are

important but they are not the be all and end all of teaching and learning. Effective learning
materials are necessary but not in themselves sufficient. Are we moving towards or moving
away from producing effective learning materials. There was a free online class at Stanford
on artificial intelligence or AI attended by 160,000 students and conducted by the world’s
leading expert on artificial intelligence. Now do you think that this expert had time to learn
about instructional design and distance education? Obviously, the person had gotten help
from an instructional designer. He did not have to learn how to teach online since he is
already a subject matter expert. And I wonder if this is what’s missing in the Open
University. You want to pile every task on the faculty member. We train ourselves to do
Prezi for our presentations. Impressive. But should I be the one doing this or someone else
should do it for me so I can focus on the content. Yes the online teacher works more before
the start of the semester and even more fundamental than that I think the role of the
faculty member has changed. Our primary responsibility is not to teach in the sense of
imparting knowledge but to create learning materials. We can only do this with a team, and
within that team there will be an instructional designer.

Pat Arinto’s Response: Well some of us who have been around long enough, know this is
how it ought to be done. Traditionally, course development followed the UK Open
University model, the course team approach, where you are able to produce course
packages precisely through a division of labor among experts comprised of a course team.
This revolutionized higher education because it was tantamount to the industrialization of
education. The team consists of subject matter experts, media designer, instructional
designers and others. They would spend two years minimum developing fantastic course
packages with audio-video materials, books, readers and guides. That’s how the UK Open
University established its status through materials or packages that they produce
surpassing all teaching materials used in the traditional textbook single author model.

The instructional design and the media design were the value added. However that model
alienated many academics. Even if it has been proven to work and everybody in fact
participated in it, there were critiques having to do with alienation, which academics felt
because instructional designers will tell them what to do, what question to ask their
students. Tutors also got alienated from the courses since they were no longer needed
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given the fantastic course materials available. And you needed new infrastructure for it to
work. That is why they built media centers, instructional design centers, printing presses,
television studios. It was a huge industry.

We tried this to a certain extent at UPOU. Some are no longer active. Other legacy units still
exist. We tried, but what happened is we shifted to MOODLE. And MOODLE is a technology
that allows you to create. You no longer need a large team to construct a course. There you
do everything, you structure things the way you like, and then with the development of
open educational resources you really don’t have to spend on creating videos and other
materials because there are tons of materials already out there. Now if that is the scenario
where you don’t have to create any new material since these are available for free, then
what do we do now?

I agree that we, individual teachers, cannot do everything. What burdens us is the time that
it takes away from us because doing that work takes time. I mean instructional design takes
time. Assessment takes time. We have some other stuff to do such as run an office, run a
program, run a committee, organize (and attend) a forum…

On Choices and Creating New Knowledge (Gigi Alfonso): I would like to think that at the
UP Open University we have a choice, a choice of whether we create text or not. In the case
of Pat, I think she is biased towards making use of existing materials, OERs in particular.
But we have another option, which is creating one’s text. I would like to think that the UP
Open University will give you that opportunity.

I remember when we started developing our modules in the early years here at UPOU,
there was a feeling among some of us that what we were doing was not for a higher
education. Our presentations, formats and choices were limited. It was like preparing
material for secondary education. The moment we went online, completely online, our
options opened up. Our horizons for creating materials in other types of text widened
because of the opportunities presented to us.

But in creating our texts, we should have respect for cultural diversity. If we create generic
materials we run the risk of alienating some members of the community at the onset. This
is something we have not yet addressed. We create new knowledge through our new texts
and we co-create new texts with our students.

Pat Arinto’s Response: Actually, the more open educational resources you use the more
writing you need to do. That is something we neglect. We cannot just provide a pile of
materials to our students without thinking that these resources were created within
another context. We should at least give a commentary of that context. That’s why we need
study guides. We need to write more when we use somebody else’s. We need to frame the
materials that we use within the contexts that they were prepared in.

Sol Hildalgo’s Response: What makes us different from other schools is that we are online.
The following idea cropped up when we were trying to develop an online community:

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“When you are online, you are spoiled for choice. There are so many choices. Anything is
possible.”

This, in fact, is our strength and also our weakness. Sometimes, I get petrified with the
array of choices available. It is difficult to choose when you have so much to choose from.
Our learning classroom ecology is like that of a tropical rainforest. Anything can grow there
and diversity is so high. It is difficult to conclude that this model works better than that
model. All models can work and I think that is the challenge that we’re facing. The
presentation says that we are getting redundant. Actually everything is getting redundant.
We can choose any form, pace and space; any nationality, any context. Anything and
everything is there and that is so difficult to handle.

Author’s Rejoinder: Just for the record, the first batch of students where I tried this
approach included our colleague, Assistant Professor Roel Cantada. These guys initiated the
Wikipedia page on Informatization and it is still live to this day. Another batch, an
undergraduate class, started the Wikipedia page on ICT4D. Today, however, this page has
become unwieldy and chaotic with 170 or so students inputting into this page every year.
The double entries and citations must be giving the Wikipedia editors a collective
headache. In my ASEAN Studies 231 class, the students are actively contributing to the
Wikipedia page on ASEAN. This is a small group of seven students but their inputs have
been substantive so far. They are actually contributing to the sum of all knowledge found in
Wikipedia.

On the Assessment Method (Mendie Lumanta): This approach shifts from competency-
based assessment to performance-based assessment. However, if we take it from the
perspective of a contract between a teacher and a student, what is the nature of that
contract. I mean what do we tell them, what do we expect of them, how are they finally
going to be assessed? I think we should have a very clear contract with the student because
that is the nature of the learning process anyway. But we need clarity on how this can be
done with this approach.

Gigi Alfonso’ Response: We are a part of a university that has an assessment system. How
will our assessment change with this kind of model? Should we give this responsibility to
our students? Should they assess themselves? That might be consistent with the model. It is
very difficult for the teacher to be giving the grade in a very open type of model. So how
should we assess in that kind of situation?

Author’s Rejoinder: Fundamentally, should we assume that responsibility? Let us take a

minute to situate ourselves. As a reality check, let me ask three questions. First question,
what are the three most valuable skills that we possess right now as professionals? Second
question, did we learn these skills inside a classroom from a teacher? In all probability, the
answer to the second question is “No.” So my third question is, how do we situate ourselves
in the grander scheme of things?

On the Workability of Open Ended Schedules (Pat Arinto): There is another issue that
needs to be addressed. The self-paced model as practiced in some universities, allows you
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to enroll anytime but the start date is always the first of the month. In such an
arrangement, how can you assess the tuition fees that should be paid by a particular
student? It may be operationalized by paying a three-month tuition. If the student does not
complete the course in three months, he/she can be given another three months. But
beyond the extension of three months, the student should pay again. There should be a
system.

Insights from a Student of an Invisible Teacher (Roel Cantada): Well in that, I was in my
element. I was allowed to do what I was capable of doing when we made the Wikipedia
thing so I had to do some research on it. First, I practiced in the Filipino Wikipedia, I
contributed a lot before we actually started working on it. For me, as a learner, I have a
method where I start in the end and move backwards. I test where my expertise and when I
fail on something, I list it down and go back to strengthen it.

I tried this is the class because I do not adopt a linear approach. I start at the end and work
myself backwards. And at the same time, Dr Flor was measuring metacognitive gains, not
cognitive or affective. Metacognitive measure is actually for people who have reached a
certain level of expertise or knowledge in a certain discipline. I agree with that approach.
But what has been said about undergraduates is not what I have come to realize. Students
who are used to a system, twelve years of education where they have been forced into
learning in a certain kind manner require time before they are able to adapt to this method.
So I don’t think the concept of the invisible teacher precludes scaffolding. There will always
be outliers who cannot capture the content. That’s where the teacher would have to step in.

POSTCRIPT AND REFLECTION

Massification vs Effective Mentoring. In retrospect, there was a certain element of

practicality in the Invisible Teacher proposal. Given considerations of time, distance and
numbers, it was just not possible for us to generate the amount of feedback that our
residential counterparts provide to their students. Nor did we have the luxury for hand-
holding and close mentoring. Limiting our class sizes was neither practical since we can
maximize the economies of scale with our online platform. The opportunity for what
UNESCO calls the massification of education is too hard to pass off.

The Absentee Teacher? The Invisible Teacher does not refer to the teacher’s absence but
to the degree of his/her online presence. The teacher may be present without having
his/her presence felt. The teacher is merely being unobtrusive, not getting in the way of
the learning process, which we subconsciously do in conventional classrooms. ELearning
allows one to lurk. The teacher may assume a minimalist posture in his/her “classroom”
interventions. But it actually involves a lot of hard work, particularly during the
preparatory stage. The hidden demands of this pedagogy has actually been the biggest
dissuader for its adoption.

Cognitive vs Metacognitive. The Millennium Development Goals have been changed to

Sustainable Development Goals. New media are now more influential than mass media.
And the term “viral” is now used to describe messages in the communication process. In
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other words, course contents change substantively. This is our biggest justification for
focusing on metacognitive outcomes.

On sequential content. I realize that the non-sequential feature of such classes may not
work for all subjects, specifically those that require progressive instruction. For such
classes, it would be best to go about the learning process in a sequential manner. In my
case, it worked particularly well with my DEVC202 (Introduction to Development
Communication) class, the content of which were divided into three units: development,
communication, and development communication. Students who wanted to get to the heart
of the matter immediately proceeded to Unit 3. Students who were more attracted to
communication commenced with Unit 2. Students who were more inclined to development
work began the semester with Unit 1. It would not matter since these three units were
modular and may be studied independently from one another.

eLearning as Independent Learning. In the past three years, I have been involved in a
number of related initiatives that have posed the possibility of squaring off these ideas with
on-the-ground realities. These initiatives included: studying the feasibility of eLearning
programs for maritime education and training institutes in Indonesia (2012); design of an
ODL program for national, provincial, district and community cadres in Vietnam (2013);
evaluation of the Open High School program of the Philippine Department of Education
(2013); the introduction of blended learning at the primary level in Lao PDR (2014); etc.
Furthermore, the University has since embarked on a number of Massive Open Online
Courses and has been actively involved in the operationalization of RA10650, the Open
Distance Learning Law. Through these, we have become more convinced that ODL can best
be applied in higher education than in basic education, in the same manner as independent
learning. Investing heavily on eLearning for primary and secondary education may result
in low returns and unintended outcomes.

Status of the Experiment. Up to this day, I am still engaged in this experiment on open
pedagogies and diminishing class roles of the ODL instructor in all my courses. One can say
that I have mainstreamed it as my teaching style. Eventually, I made it a point to include the
following paragraphs in my course guides, which were reiterated in the first class advisory
that I would issue:

As my online students, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to brief you

about my predisposition towards an open learning system. As you
know, we operate within policies and guidelines set out by the
University of the Philippines System, some of which may not be entirely
consistent with open education, particularly the latter’s constructivist
character. However, I would like to stretch the limits imposed by a
residential system upon our open and distance learning system. Thus, I
will experiment on a non-linear, non-sequential, open-ended
arrangement, specifically when it comes to our course requirements.

This means that:

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  You may upload your blogs anytime and in any order, within the
semester.
 Our learning logs are asynchronous and may be visited in any
order at any time. All logs are open as of today and will terminate
at the end of the semester. There is no specific timeframe provided
for each unit or topic.
 You may proceed with your readings as you are comfortable with,
i.e., begin at the middle proceed at the end and end at the
beginning of your reading.
 The idea is to make the online experience as learner-centered as
possible.

There is of course a downside to this approach.

Firstly, the responsibility for learning falls squarely upon your

shoulders. If you succeed, the credit belongs to you exclusively. If you
fail, you have no one to blame but yourself. However, this does not
mean that learning should be an individual activity. You are fully
encouraged to form support groups or online study groups among
yourselves, using Google Talk, Skype or Facebook. Start
communicating with your classmates to form these workgroups.

Secondly, it means that you require specific qualities in order to

succeed. Paramount among these qualities is discipline, focus and
determination. You should likewise possess an analytical or critical
mind. You should know that you are expected to demonstrate
academic integrity and intellectual honesty in your work. Make sure
you do all the requirements on your own. ALL materials lifted from
secondary sources must be CITED properly. Give a list of references and
materials cited at the end of each requirement you submit.

These days, my standard instruction cum explanation for learning log participation is as
follows:

Your individual Learning Logs will be the basis for your Forum
Participation and Learning Resource Contribution grades. These
constitute 45 percent of your final grade.

There are three Learning Logs, each corresponding to a course unit.

After reading the course materials provided for each unit, do a Google
search of related materials, preferably open educational resources or
OERs, available on the World Wide Web. If you are not familiar with the
OER concept, Google it and learn what it stands for. These may be in the
form of text documents, podcasts, video or presentation materials.
Choose what you think are the best among the lot and post the
universal resource locator or URL for the material to share with your
classmates. Your classmates are expected to study the material and post
their reactions towards it. Thirty (30) percent of your grade depends on
the three materials, which you have chosen to share. Fifteen (15)

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 percent of your grade depends on the reactions that you post on the
three materials shared by your classmates.

Please take note. Do not upload the material. Just post the URL.
Uploading the material to our course site may be a violation of
intellectual property rights (IPR) if the material is not an OER.

Your contributions to the Learning Logs may be posted in any order

anytime within the semester. Again, although you are given this leeway,
do not procrastinate. Consider this an opportunity to exercise your
sense of responsibility and demonstrate your sincerity. You are strongly
advised to complete these requirements as soon as you can. The earlier
you complete these, the better for you.

The approach has elicited different reaction from my students.

Feedback. The majority were appreciative, perhaps not because of the autonomy afforded
them but because of the opportunity for procrastination that the method allowed.
However, I would submit that procrastination is a tendency that is not innately encouraged
by open ended arrangements but by the predominant educational model

Since the narrative was presented, reservations have been expressed by several colleagues
surprisingly coming from those who consider themselves staunch advocates of the learner-
centered approach. To them, learner-centeredness means making it easier for a student to
learn, even if it means directly manipulating variables inherent in a teaching-learning
situation. They are predisposed to provide the stimuli, incentives and conditions necessary
for a student learn at the least possible time with the least resistance. They mouth learning
principles such as the necessity of immediate feedback or instantaneous reward. I retort
that such an approach belongs in the traditional classroom, not the virtual classroom. To
me, the place for this type of learning is basic education, not higher education. Learner-
centeredness refers to enabling the student to learn independently, on his terms. As
champions of open education, we must take this learner-centered advocacy seriously.
Otherwise, we exist as mere alternatives to residential education. And given our
constraints, we remain poor alternatives who use technology to compensate for our
deficiencies based on the bar of traditional universities.

In such a case, a student may learn cognitively, affectively and behaviorally. But s/he
cannot learn how to learn under real conditions. Furthermore, power still resides solely
upon the teacher who provides or withdraws these stimuli, incentives and conditions.
Although we refuse to admit it, for so long, we teachers have considered ourselves as the
main actor in a teaching-learning situation. We delude ourselves by thinking that students
learn from us. The reality is that they learn inspite of us.

The narrative was presented before UPOU became actively involved in developing and
offering Massive Open Online Courses, which reflected many of the qualities of an Invisible
Teacher’s class.

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