As a teacher,
I like teaching and learning activities (TLA) that becomes somewhat more
personal compared with giving a lecture, i.e. meeting students in seminars (smaller
groups) or supervising master thesis students. Hence, I have had some resistance
to embark online/blended learning. When acquainted with the concept “Flipped
class room” I started my journey towards blended learning. I could reduce
traditional lectures and instead make recordings, refer to videos, and put
more emphasizes on discussions in follow-up seminars.
The “game changer”
for education, i.e. the spread of the corona virus, forced me to advance into the
field of online learning. I was lucky to join the ONL community and its introductory course. The course guided me to new approaches and tools, supporting online education and learning, and possibilities to apply
and discuss them within an ONL-group (no 8). As a result, or a consequence, I see many
more options and possibilities to transform traditional education to online,
which I before could not apprehend. However, online education and
learning is not, in my perspective, a solution to all kind of TLAs, but can in many ways improve both learning and efficiency.
From the
reflections above, it was also very useful to know about the concept “Community
of Inquiry” (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013) and the more
concrete Five-stage model (Salmon, 2013). I especially found the emphasis on socialization
when designing a blended/online course interesting. It is relative easy to
change a traditional course to become online, for example using recordings,
communicate via Zoom, and managing all assignment and study material via a Learning Management System (LMS). But to make students committed and motivated
becomes another kind of challenge, than meeting students, or students meeting students,
in a campus course.
The concept
“Scaffolding for learning” (Salmon, 2014) seems to be important, more than I
believed before study the literature and videos in topic 4. I realize now, when
designing an online/blended course that I need to go deeper into activities
that promotes students and teachers to socialize, as a fundamental prerequisite for commitment
and motivation. This is probably the main challenge to obtain a successful
online course, i.e. where students (and teachers enjoy) the course and obtain
the intended learning outcomes. I am not sure how practicing socialization in an
online course, but hopefully further exploration will take me, and my students, there
J
References
Salmon, G
(2014) Scaffolding for learning. [Homepage] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pKsZ6dVhlI&feature=emb_title
Vaughan, N.
D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating
and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press. Chapter 1 “The Community of Inquiry Conceptual framework”.
Thanks Fredrik for your insightfull comments of your reflections on blended learning approach. I actually liked the point you raised about importance of motivation in online learning. I am also quite unaware of this point and probably learn more during actual teaching activities. However, for students, recordings can be boring as it makes them passive. Socialization is another issue during online course. I completely agree with you on scaffolding the learners and it will be predominant in online teaching. I wish it would be better if you could mention the specific features you want to include in traditional teaching.
SvaraRaderaHi Adithya! Thanks for commenting the post, and your interesting viewpoints.
RaderaHi Fredrik, nice to hear about your personal experience! Sounds like you are doing a good job! I think your struggle of sparking motivation in students will be an ongoing one, as every student is different. How did you motivate students in your offline classes? I think that sometimes physical presence is confused with mental attendance...
SvaraRaderaAnd yes, socialisation is also a very subjective matter - some groups are more lively than others, I'm sure that you will come up with effective mingling activities online! It's all about trust :)
//Sophie
Hi Sophie! Hopefully I'm going in the right direction :-) Being a teacher for a long time I've experienced many failures when trying to improve, but in the long run I believe that "doing and reflection" is most rewarding for both students and teachers. A very good and interesting point you made: ...that physical presence can be confused with mental attendance, that's worth thinking about :-)
RaderaDear Fredrik, Your post revives two memories. The first is from an online conference where they offered lunch activities such as yoga and "bring your brown bag and talk to others who also brought their brown bag". These kind of activities sparked informal conversations among the conference participants. The second memory are from my PhD studies when I did online ethnographical studies. I spent many hours with one of my informants, travelling to different places in the virtual world, we visited a conference in the virtual world, explored an archaeological excavation, walked through several virtual campuses and sat by a camp fire in the woods, hearing the fire that crackled. I think these memories are examples of how to practice online socialisation, based on the purpose with the activitiy (conference vs. participant observation in a virtual world). I am convinced that you will find ideas on how to practice socialisation in your courses. Perhaps you can ask your students to contribute with ideas? Best wishes, Karin
SvaraRaderaHi Karin! Interesting and nice story of your phd-studies, I have never been in contact with the concept "online ethnographic studies" :-). Thanks for inspiring examples and ideas. Asking students how to promote socialization in online courses is a obvious as well a splended idea :-) //Fredrik
SvaraRadera