Category: Learning

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.

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.

So onwards on the journey – Collaborative learning in digital learning environments.  In module two we have explored the concepts of open learning, sharing and openness. And what does that mean for my practice as a teacher? Honestly, previous to this module, I hadn’t thought much about open educational resources other than I’ve looked at a few sites to see if I could find useful material. For me, it has meant basically – finding free books online. Now, however, I understand that there’s so much more to it.

Sustainability of Open Educational Resources

In the Ted talk by David Wiley from 2010,[i] he is passionately promoting open educational resources. It’s all very nice but somewhat unrealistic to think that resources could be available openly and for free.  Today nothing is for free, and if nothing else, we pay to avoid annoying ads by giving personal information. I read a summary by David Wiley published on the OECD website[ii]. It’s from 2007 and covers the sustainability of open educational resources. He acknowledges that sustaining work that are given away freely is difficult but not impossible. This paper presents various examples and ways for funding. A reference is made to UNESCO and that it was them that in 2002 coined the concept – open educational resources. They wished to develop together a universal educational resource available for the whole of humanity. That reminded me of some recent news about UNESCO awarding a prize for efforts within open education, and I headed to the UNESCO website.

OER for the good of humanity

WOW…now that is inspirational! An article tells the story of a project “One College Student Per Village” that received a UNESCO prize for its use of AI to empower rural learners in China[iii]. It’s run by the Open University of China. They have set up smart cloud-based classrooms and use AI (artificial intelligence) to create customized learning plans for individual students. And it made me think, maybe OER is not so much talked about where I am because we are privileged in so many ways and most people can afford to pay for educational resources. But in reality, almost 40 % of the world’s population do not have access to the internet[iv].

The freedom to remix

Back to my practice…If I would use more material available under an open license that allows remix, adaptation and to build further on that would be really useful. I often find things I would like to use if I could only make adjustments without worrying that I’m infringing on someone rights. Even academic freedom could increase if we used more open educational resources. So much more than just free online books!

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[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M

[ii] https://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/38645447.pdf

[iii] https://en.unesco.org/news/open-university-china-awarded-unesco-prize-its-use-ai-empower-rural-learners

[iv] https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/