Month: May 2021

My takeaways

So the course I’ve attended in Collaborative Learning in Digital Learning Environments has come to its end. It’s time to summarize and reflect on my learning and development.

My most important takeaways

One of my most important takeaways was early in the course when introduced to White & Le Cornu’s (2011) concept of Visitors and Residents on the internet. It was a relief to think of it in this way as opposed to Marc Prensky’s (2001) idea of Digital natives and Digital immigrants, divided by age by age only. Being a digital immigrant felt like I was never expected to contribute to my student’s digital literacy. And I will keep the diagram of visitors and residents in my mind and reflect on how my own identity is changing.

Then learning more about open educational resources was an eye-opener. At first, I thought of it as wishful thinking, but now I know it’s so much more. I will explore more of the resources available and incorporate them into my courses. When and if I’m pleased with modules in my courses, I will share them on canvas commons. And I will be more conscious in the way I use material from other sources, cleaning up a few presentations. A new open micro-course on Digital literacies for online learning will take me further on this path.

The third major takeaway is course design, but I’m still overwhelmed by all the input, theories, and ideas; I need time to sort it out and read more. The final assignment is on this subject. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments by Vaughan et al. (2013) and material by Terry Anderson and David Wiley are high on my to-read list.

The role of technology

I’m an engineer, so I like technology. I buy and subscribe to more tech stuff than I should from a sustainability perspective. However, I’ve dropped the OBS, stream deck, multiple cameras, multiple screens, a wireless mic, and a few other gadgets. It was honestly a hassle just to set everything up, and I felt it took some of my focus away from the students. And me being genuinely present seems to work better than anything else. I’m still thinking of getting a teleprompter to be able to look into the camera more. On the application side, I’ve tested many and found a few favorites so far, especially for collaboration. I’m now regularly using Padlet, Mentimeter, Mural, and a few more mapping tools and simulations specific to industrial management. I have more student activity and engagement with these tools than most things I’ve done on the campus. With a simulation that ran for an entire course, one of the most ambitious students commented that this was the first time he felt challenged and could dive deep into a subject. In the same simulation, a student with the ambition just to pass said – I could not keep myself away from it. I also found more students in a group participate, which then contribute to the group.

The journey continues

This course is about to end. I’m just two hours away from the deadline for this blog post, and I have already received one mail and one reminder for my course valuation. Once my own teaching ends for the summer holidays, I’ll review the course design material and complete the final written exam. We are to create a course plan using Gilly Salmon’s Five Stage Model (www.gillysalmon.com). I’m looking forward to spending time on this as it’s something I want to do with all the courses I teach. Courses should be continuously improved. I’m also excited for the new normal, and my courses are primarily campus-based; they will shift to hybrid and blended learning.

“Being a teacher is having a deep love of learning & want to pass that to others.”
@librarian_tiff

Learning

Where am I and where to next…

Post author By Kristina Furubacke
Post date May 18, 2021
195 Comments on Where am I and where to next…

In this fourth module, we have explored various frameworks in learning design. A helpful way to think about it is like scaffolding. It’s there to support and facilitate the students learning. The more experiences the students are the less scaffolding is needed.

The suggested topic of this blog post was to reflect on my current practice and possibilities for the development of online and blended learning designs.

My teaching practice

Thinking of my practice, I remember an article I read some time ago about the typical development stages of a teacher in higher education. Unfortunately, I can’t recall where I read it or who wrote it. It was partly anecdotal and based on informal observations. You start at the first stage, where the focus I mostly on yourself as a teacher. Once you feel reasonably comfortable with that position, the focus shifts to the subject and the content you teach. In the third step, the focus is on the students learning. You move from your teaching to your students learning. The following steps are about supporting students to use their knowledge so they can finally manage their learning process independently.

I’m just coming to the end of my third year teaching undergraduate engineering programs. With almost thirty years of experience from various positions in the corporate world, working as an engineer, I was pretty comfortable standing in front of a group. Many years of leadership training and coaching skills are made to good use. I’ve definitely spent time focusing on my subject. The many interesting questions the student asks make me dig deeper to better understand my topic. I have also noticed that it has made me try to pack more content into my courses, and I’m now sure that is not helping my students learn more.

Improving course design

That brings me to where I’m now, ready to go all in to facilitate my students’ learning. It’s the reason why I decided to take this course in Collaborative Learning in Digital Learning Environments. Also, this last year working from home has been a period of exploring and testing. I’ve used several digital tools for collaboration, introduced computer-based simulations in a course and tested quite a few technical gadgets. And although it’s been exciting I now feel the need to, for the next few months, focus on the design of my courses.

THIS course

I knew this was not the best period time to take this course due to my workload but I’m glad I did. I found lots of new input and inspiration. But I have felt overwhelmed and I need a lot more time to digest the content. I wish I had a colleague or two that also took the course, to discuss the content. Even with the pandemic, hopefully coming to some kind of end, I’m convinced that online collaborative learning will be a part of most courses.

And I have signed up for another course. This time it’s an open course in “Digital literacies for online learning”. That and all the material and readings I want to go through will be my summer project. Maybe I’ll join some of the new workshops arranged by my university on creating creative and flexible learning environments – both in a physical and digital environment.

Learning

A personal learning network in the making

Post author By Kristina Furubacke
Post date May 6, 2021
167 Comments on A personal learning network in the making

So the next step in my journey on collaborative learning has been on the topic of learning in communities – networked and collaborative. When I reflect on my best experience of collaborative learning, it’s when I previously worked within business development in an international corporation. I had the opportunity to participate a few times in working groups where we used a business transformation consultant. His role was to facilitate our work and nudge us in the right direction, often asking questions. We never felt that he was interfering with our work or taking over, but we knew that we would not have managed the same quality and level of work without him. Every time we were amazed at the work we had done and that feeling of accomplishing something that none of us could have done independently. I was the WOW of collaborative learning. During my years working in the private industrial sector, I also had mentors, experienced senior executives that I met and talked with regularly. During a period, I also used a professional development coach.

Personal Learning Network

Now that I’m in this new profession and my role in teaching, I don’t have the same personal learning network. My personal learning network today consists mainly of various sources that I use to grow my knowledge. This last year I’ve participated in webinars, online conferences on multiple topics related to higher education and teaching maybe two to three times a month. I’m also in a national Facebook group about online teaching in higher education. It has over 4000 members and provides almost instant support, and a fantastic source of knowledge. I’ve also found some interesting resources on LinkedIn and Twitter. I recently added some resources related to open education. With the technology, my learning network is not limited to the colleagues that I have locally, but I can so easily take part in events all over the world. Not only can I find what I’m looking for, but the most interesting is that I find things I didn’t even know existed. Some of that has changed the way I think about teaching, and it has improved my practice. This last year has been so full of golden nuggets on online education. I’ve incorporated some of them into my courses. There are so many more things that I want to explore, try and test.

Feelings of frustration

Another topic we have explored is online group work. One paper reported findings from a study on factors that students found frustrating in online collaborative learning (Capdeferro and Romero, 2012). The number one source of frustrations was commitment imbalance followed by unshared goals. These are the most common arguments that I’ve met among students when they don’t get to pick their group. These complaints are mostly from students who feel that other student work is of a significantly lower quality than their own. The study, by the way, had the majority of students 57,5 % reporting rarely or very rarely feeling frustrated (Capdeferro and Romero, 2012). One golden nugget I take with me is to have group work followed by an individual assignment (Brindley, Blaschke and Walti, 2009). That way, the ambitious student can have the opportunity to excel but is simultaneously dependent on the group work. That will also support me as I need to set individual grades in group work.

I made it – just in time

I have also experienced some level of frustration the last week because there was a lot of reading and one paper I could not make any sense of it. But my frustration was really with my poor time management and inability to understand, not the group. The other participants on the course are a great source of insightful comments and brilliant suggestions on interesting reading.

References:

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. and Walti, C. (2009) ‘Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment’, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(3). doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v10i3.675.

Capdeferro, N. and Romero, M. (2012) ‘Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?’, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(2), p. 26. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v13i2.1127.

Learning