Random Thoughts for ONL

  • Topic 5

    Learning experience in this course has been kind of an interesting lesson in itself. Looking at the four modes of learning as expressed by Professor Richard Elmore, I think I expected the course to be like so many others, on an hierarchical individual level. But to my surprise, looking back, I think I have mentally conceptualized and journeyed thought all four levels (roughly speaking) in this course.

    For example, when the very first meeting came and we did some video presentations about ourselves, submitted and that was it, next task. But then when we got into the work a bit more, and the FISh document took its place, I thought, “well, this is a typical hierarchical collective learning experience” (without actually thinking in those terms, since I had not heard about these four modes of learning beforehand, but the idea was the same, i.e., similar to the individual hierarchical but focused on group activities). And I think this was the case for the first topic, we collaborate, discussed and took some time to find common values and together find a solution to the task at hand.

    I would say it wasn’t until perhaps topic 3 that we really started to get the hang of the asynchronous work a bit more, and it, in a way, turned more into a distributed individual learning. We do this since we are interested about new ways of education and teaching. There were not given approach or correct answer, but we (individually in our group) sat out to study whats been done, read up on new ideas, insights, and basically come back with “building blocks” to our meetings and used to compile our final contribution of that topic.

    The last two topics became more about not just reading up and learning by ourselves, but also to share what we learned. That is to say, not just in the submissions, but also between ourselves and in the final Miro-board.

    So, one of the biggest takeaway from this course would be the mix between the synchronous and asynchronous learning we have been through, and how this hybrid mode (synchronous and asynchronous) have affected the continuous learning. This is something I wish to better incorporate in my own learning which has been focused, perhaps a bit too much, on the hierarchical collective side of things. If I can motivate and “provoke” (in lack of a better word) the idea of self-benefited knowledge, not necessarily within the scope of a course and its grade, but for the sake of learning, expanding the students own skills, and perhaps even share their experience and learning with others, not necessarily within the limited class, but different networks and/or communities. Then I think I as a teacher has managed to open up the full potential of that course or topic. Learning is not limited to a course, but an ongoing social activity.

    In this sense, I think the ONL course has made me reflect more on the way we can learn, collaborate, share, problematize in our ways of teaching and learning.

  • Topic 4

    I think the idea of blended learning comes with a few benefits that I myself have not reflected much upon before reading up on the concept. Hybrid learning, i.e., to have a mix between at campus and online students (Kenney and Newcombe, 2011), is something I am very used to, both as a teacher and a student. But the blended learning, i.e., to combine face-to-face instructions with technology mediated instructions (Graham and Allen, 2005), seems to pose some new possibilities. New, in the sense that, with the ability to use “the best of both worlds”, teachers can no design courses that mixes the flexibility of online courses with face-to-face interaction.

    The upside of this latter form of education, i.e., blended, is that a series of synchronous (e.g., traditional classrooms, virtual classrooms, live practice labs) and asynchronous (e.g., email, online bulletin boards or communities) learning environments along with different physical or virtual media to deliver the learning content. Kaur (2013) provides a good overview, and explains that the goal of blended learning is to leverage the advantages of each environment and emphasizes bringing together the online and face-to-face classroom elements. The media components of blended learning can be, e.g., face-to-face that is formal (e.g. instructor led classrooms, workshops or coaching/mentoring) or informal (e.g., collegial comments). The media can also be virtual in a synchronous form (e.g., live e-learning) or asynchronous (e.g., online forums), but also take a self-paced learning approach (e.g., web learning modules, scenarios, and self-assessments).

    Of course, as with any new way of anything, one should take care to use and apply that which make sense, and not just for the sake of applying. That is why blended learning really is a double-edged sword. One the one hand, the different forms of environments and media that opens up with this particular type of learning is broad, but with this broadness, great care must be given to ensure that the environment and media used is serving the goals of the course and can be used successfully by all participants, i.e., not introduced to a course simply because it is available.

    Looking ahead a bit into Professor Richard Elmore’s modes of learning, blended learning provides a good tool to introduce both the hierarchical mode of learning as well as the distributed, e.g., by leveraging different synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. While I myself usually mix between the two hierarchical modes of learning in my courses in a typical synchronous fashion, I will start to introduce more asynchronous (e.g., online-forums) to try to nudge students towards more self-reflecting and self-driven learning, on top of the normal synchronous learning (e.g., classrooms led and workshop learning).

  • Topic 3

    The scenario posed in this posed an interesting question, how can people recognize the value of becoming part of a learning community and the benefit of social learning?

    So, this poses two questions, what is a learning community, and what is social learning? While both these concepts have many, slightly varying, definitions, I came across one regarding the former that I found particularly interesting. In Zhu et al. (2005, p. 253), the definition of learning community has been described as “working collaboratively toward shared, significant academic goals in environments in which competition, if not absent, is at least de-emphasized.” The interesting part here is of course the absence or at least downplay of competition. This is a concept I have been trying to invoke in my own teaching, having weekly pass or fail assignment / reflections that the student will then discuss in small groups during the upcoming lesson. Students have reported that they feel they have gained a better understanding of the many nuances of the assignments, and that there might be more than one correct way of solving the task.

    This seems to be supported by a study conducted by Gutiérrez-Braojos et al. (2019) who found in their experiment that collaboration, without competition, in a face-to-face environment resulted in more contributions from the students with a higher cognitive quality. Interesting enough, the authors also investigated the difference between the face-to-face group with a virtual e-based group. This is where it gets interesting. The authors found that, although there were no difference in the number of contributions between the two groups (the psychical, face-to-face group and the virtual, e-learning based group), the complexity and cognitive quality was deemed lower in the virtual group.

    In my search around for articles on the topic, I cam across another study from 2019, by Bilgin and Gul. They too compared face-to-face with virtual learning, but with a twist. For the virtual group they introduced the concept of gamification to see if it affected the attitudes towards assignments. The element of gamification is an interesting idea as it creates a dynamic between students in that “another individual, typically a conspecific, plays some role in supplying the learner with the information that is subsequently learned” (Heyes, 2012, p. 7). Or in other words, social learning. What Bilgin and Gul (2019) found was that, although adding the element of gamification did not affect the attitude towards the assignment, it did lead to higher commitment, better learning and promoted group cohesion.

    This poses some interesting questions around non-collaborative group work with elements of gamification, to help, build, and shape each others learning and experience. A topic ripe for further investigation, indeed.

  • Topic 2 – Week 1

    For this weeks topic and scenario, we decided to address openness in education and teaching from challenges and opportunities. To help us denote just what we mean by that we landed on the three dimensional model as presented by Dalsgaard and Thestrup (2015): communication, transparency, and engagement.

    When reading up on various challenges and opportunities, I cam across the article written by Bearman and Ajjawi (2018), on what they perceive to be myths around transparency around assessment criteria in education. While the article discuss assessment criteria, I find it applicable in many other contexts too involving teaching and education as a whole. Some of the key takeaways I found was that:

    • there is knowledge that cannot be expressed, i.e., holistic tacit knowledge. As such, any transparent standards and criteria or how an activity should be carried must simplify the complex nature of the work in order to assess it.
    • transparency is in the eye of the beholder, i.e., if activities or criteria are socially constructed based on tacit knowledge, they are perceived and interpreted on an individual’s social history and standing. As such, what is transparent for an expert in the field may be opaque to the student.
    • what does visibility conceal? That is to say, by describing an activity or assessment criteria, the teacher is implicitly saying: the student should pay attention to this. In so doing directing students’ attention away from that.

    As an effect of these “challenges”, transparency could lead to a misguided attempt to control students’ output in a way that helps them meet the criteria, but not necessarily learn. Or in other words, transparency may control how students see knowledge.

  • Topic 1 – Week 2

    This week was a bit more energetic. In our group, we have started to know each other, and we have found some interesting reading material around digital literacy. Although, up to this point, it has been a bit unclear just what to produce and how. However, today was the last day to work on it, and so decisions had to be made and presentations created.

    One point that has come to my mind whilst talking about the digital literacy in teaching is how to overcome the challenge two different “types” or “generations” of students. On the one hand, you may have the younger (digital native) crowd who might feel they know (or ought to know) technology, meaning they don’t have to spend too much time to learn the different tools. Whilst on the other hand, you have the older who may be “afraid” to engage with this new medium due to lack of prior exposure to ICT. These two, very different, groups would thus need two completely different instructions and perhaps even motivations as to why and how to use the tools. Yet, I for one usually don’t think in these terms and take much for granted, e.g., providing a link to Zoom in the schedule and assume the student will show up on time.

    But the same challenge could arguably also be said to be with teachers themselves. Do we know how and why to use Zoom? How can I find relevant information on the Internet? What else do I need to keep in mind or know about before I can use or alter information or pictures I have found?

    Therefore, for this weeks assignment, we focused on the six steps of digital literacy and tried to provide tips and ideas for how each and every one of these steps could be improved and included a self-evaluation on digital literacy table by the very end of the presentation.

    It will be interesting to see what the other groups ended up presenting.

  • Topic 1 – Week 1

    Reading about digital literacy I cannot but reflect on how much of these aspects are taken for granted in much of the teaching I do myself. Being a lecturer in a remote university, much of the education is on distance, and we therefore rely quite heavily on ICT.

    Although remote teaching has worked quite well (judging from students reflections), a lot of their digital literacy is taken for granted. Not just using an online platform (e.g., Canvas) for downloading and uploading assignments and to share relevant course material, but the virtual classrooms we have been using (e.g., Zoom) and their ability to find, interpret, and use material found on the wider internet. Who ever saw an online course with the prerequisite of having at least X university credits in “Digital Information: identification, disinformation and fake news”, for example.

    As such, I think it becomes difficult to separate digital literacy as a professional/student trait as something different from ones person. That is to say, it is skill that can be learned and trained, just as finding and reading any other type of text (e.g., finding, reading, and understanding legal text, standards, or academic work).

    I think this topic might be a good start for the ONL course, since here too we have a diverse group of participants, with different (digital) skills. It creates an environment where we don’t only see it from one side of the coin (e.g., that of the teacher trying to understand the student), but among teachers trying to understand our differences and similarities to reach some common goals in order to solve the task at hand.

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