Author: alexvest

ONL have been an eye opening for me, seeing different people from different cultured participating in the same activities. Even if we were all teachers, we still come from different placed and have different ideas about many things. We have written blog posts which was completely new for me and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It was hard to read everyone’s blog post but I have read as many as I had time to.

Writing my own blog posts felt “weird”. I have never written a blog post or shared any information about me life/work. This was something completely new. I have to say that I enjoyed writing a post after each topic to express my own feelings for that topic. We had to have references linked to our text supporting something in it. I did not like that part of writing your own blog. Why do I have to find someone else that thinks the same as I do?

I have enjoyed ONL more than I thought I would. I heard that it was a lot of work and it would take a lot of time to complete everything. I agree that it took a long time to complete everything. I was late with my blog post in almost every topic, but I still enjoyed the time I spent with my PBL group. We always had interesting discussions about the topic.

Even if I did not enjoy searching for articles, I found some interesting articles. Er et al (2009) write about blended learning and they suggested that there should be at least two types of learning to support most students’ needs. This is interesting because it is completely different from what I have been thinking. I have always felt that it should be either on-campus or off-campus. Alkali et al. (2004) stated that digital literacy requires the students to have more knowledge about different aspects than just the concept of the computer. This was again an interesting view. This is also completely different from what I have imagined in to be. I always thought that someone with knowledge of a computer would be able to use it. I never thought about, for example, the cultural and social aspect of the students. My PBL group gave me a lot of insight in these different areas and I can now understand why these authors wrote as they did.

I think this was a big part of ONL, learning something new from people doing the same thing as you do. I do not know if we are all teachers in ONL, but it felt like we were trying to achieve the same goals in the end. I have had a lot of fun during this time and this is my last blog post for ONL. I would like to thank everyone in my PBL group: Denise, Achref, Emina, Karin, Bianca and Anna for a wonderful time and great discussions during these last 12 weeks.

References

Alkali, Y. E., & Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2004). Experiments in digital literacy. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(4), 421-429.

Er, E., Özden, M., & Arifoglu, A. (2009). A blended e-learning environment: A model proposition for integration of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning. International Journal Of Learning, 16(2), pp. 449-460.

Topic 4 had, yet again another interesting topic with many intersecting discussions. My PBL group focused on two things: Challenges of multitasking in blended learning and Models (or techniques/tools) for blended learning.

When we discussed the challenges of multitasking, I thought of myself that it there are no challenges in multitasking for programming students. When you are programming you are solving problems, which might not be obvious when you are writing the code. I usually go outside or do something else while I am thinking of a solution to a programming problem and most of the times that works. Instead of sitting hours and hours looking at a computer screen, I will do something more productive and still solve the problem (most of the time). This is great, multitasking should work fine for any programmer, no… I believe that I am only able to do this technique because I understand the programming language and the structure of the code. When I am solving the problem, I am only thinking about the problem and how to solve it, not how to write the code. This is not the same for students, especially new students to programming. New student does not know the syntax, how to structure the code or how to test the code to find a solution. This means that it is much harder for new students to multitask when they are programming. Harder might be the wrong word, but it would take a lot more time for them to complete simple tasks if they multitask. Similar to what Bowman et al. (2010) states in their study when they found out that multitasking does not affect the grade of the students, but they need more time to complete a task. This creates an issue with blended learning, without proper concentration form the students and that they follow every step, they will have a much harder time learning and understanding the code. This is very similar to multitasking is very similar both face-to-face and during online, if the students does something else during the time there are trying to solve problem, they will simply not solve that problem. Kraushaar and Novak (2010) states that students that uses computers during a face-to-face lecture does not fully understand the negative impact that it can create. This could relate to the programming students, the students does not understand that they need to focus on learning before they can multitask.

There are many different tools with blended learning and one that we use in our programming courses is Zoom. We have the course set up in a way that all lectures are on campus (face-to-face) and during the supervision sessions, we use Zoom (online). We are mixing online learning with face-to-face. We want our students to concentrate and focus on the information we provide during the lecture. During the supervision session, we allow the students to work in their group and discuss at any location. This means that they do not need to go to campus together. The students could sit at home and simply participate in the supervision session. During supervision, session students can ask questions to how they would solve a problem and then we teachers give them things they can think about. If the students have participated and gather most of the information during the lecture, with a little help from us teacher they should be able to solve the problem.  We are completely new to this hybrid method and we are focusing on the access and motivation similar to the five-stage model (Salmon, 2013). Similar to the five-stage model, we do not see a need for face-to-face supervision. The students can do it in their own pace and wherever they want. I believe this makes the student able to feel freedom and not restricted to a classroom setting with classroom “rules”.

References

Bowman, L. L., Levine, L. E., Waite, B. M., & Gendron, M. (2010). Can students really multitask? An experimental study of instant messaging while reading. Computers & Education, 54(4), 927-931.

Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. Available at: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html [2022-05-18]

Kraushaar, J. M., & Novak, D. C. (2010). Examining the affects of student multitasking with laptops during the lecture. Journal of Information Systems Education, 21(2), 241-252.

Collaborative learning is an interesting way for people to learn together. As we all have noticed, it is a lot easier to work in a group than if we were alone. In my PBL group we discussed on what areas of collaborative learning we would focus on for this topic and we chose “Teachers role in collaborative learning” and “limitations of collaborative learning”. These were the most interesting topics and were something we wanted to discuss.

Collaborative learning is not something you can implement in every type of education. Collaborative learning might not be beneficial for some assignment in some subject. For example, in art, an assignment could be to draw a portrait of yourself. This assignment is an individual assignment and would not benefit from working with someone else. My PBL group discussed a lot about group work and individual work. We came to the conclusion that we must have individual assignment when the students are working in a group. There are some limitations to this which is that we teachers cannot grade every students during their collaborative work. They might benefit from collaborative learning but we teachers have no knowledge about it. When I worked in a group when I studied, I would do most of the work and then my group would present my work. The teachers would think that I did nothing while my group did all the work. My PBL group came up with two possible solutions for this and one was individual assignment that is a part of the group assignment, e.g. the students do their individual assignment and the group assignment is to discuss the individual assignment. This could give the students the benefit of collaborative learning while giving us teachers the information we need.

The teachers’ role in collaborative learning is also important. The preparation of student groups and choice of assignment is the key to success within collaborative learning. Deciding on which students will work together can make a difference in their work. In some of my courses we mix the groups so they are similar in age and gender to make the groups as equal as possible. A group contract is an interesting document that can be used within collaborative learning and it is something my faculty have implemented in some of our courses. The group contract allows the students to write some specific rules that every student should follow as well as what happen if someone breaks the contract. The choice of assignment should mimic a real world problem which students can relate to whenever they start working. Teachers have to understand that some real life problems might be too complex for students and for the teachers (Steiner et al., 2006). One solution to this is to create an assignment of a real life problem which is scaled down so students have the knowledge and time to solve the problem.

Brundiers et al. (2010) states that when using real-world learning the students will not automatically build competencies. This means that the teachers needs to incorporate three principles:

1. Collaborative design – Students must work together, get a role, set responsibilities and expectations.
2. Coordination – Coordination between faculties which provides supervision to the students when they are in need.
3. Integration in general introductory courses – Introduce the students to the real world problems. Most of them have not participated in real world assignment.

In one of our courses at my university we have course that focuses on these three points. The students’ assignment is to create a system that can talk to two other system. In the course we allow the students to choose their own role (Team leader, programmer, designer, tester, etc) with their own responsibilities, and then we combine them together so they have a full team. The teachers in the courses acts as the students “senior colleague” and does not have any knowledge of the students work expect what they present during meeting. As a senior colleague we set our expectations for the whole project. The teacher coordinate to only give the information our role has and have the same types of meeting and response time (e.g. with email.) We also give the students an introductory to the project which they are allow to ask any question they want about the course or the assignment before the roleplaying starts.

I feel like collaborative learning is an important aspect of studies in higher education, but it is not useful if the students does not use it properly. Students that enrolls to a university simply to get a diploma are not motivated enough to contribute with a collaborative learning method. Those students would rather slack off and let other do most of the work and in the end they will get the same grade. Therefore, it is important to implement individual assignments that should be graded and the group assignment should be used to discuss these individual assignments.

References

Brundiers, K., Wiek, A., & Redman, C. L. (2010). Real‐world learning opportunities in sustainability: from classroom into the real world. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Steiner, G., & Laws, D. (2006). How appropriate are two established concepts from higher education for solving complex real‐world problems? A comparison of the Harvard and the ETH case study approach. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

The second week of the ONL course was quite interesting, both the scenario and all the discussions within the PBL group and other PBL groups. My PBL group talked a lot about open education as a tool for sharing documents between teachers but also to teach students instead of the traditional way of teaching at a campus. My PBL group did agree that sharing resources between teachers is useful and we should do it, but we did not always agree on if open education was that good or “bad”. We decided that we should focus on two aspects of the scenario: “social and cultural understating of open education” and “quality in open education”.

Open education was viewed as an alternative to the “typical” campus teaching. Students would watch videos and view the material that teachers would have uploaded. This meant that any student around the whole world could participate in these open education courses. This sounds great on paper, but is it really that good? We started to discuss the quality aspects of open learning and asked ourselves the question: “who decides what is right?”. I think this is a very interesting question. When I teach, I provide the students with information that relates to our learning objective in the course, but is this the best way of teaching? We could use standard which would be set by experts. My PBL group discussed a bit of who is an expert and it could be a qualified teacher. In my opinion, an expert is one that is devoted and have a lot of knowledge within a subject, e.g. a professor. A person who has done a lot of research or worked within the field for a long time is an expert.

The cultural and social understanding of open education differs a lot, which again could cause some problems. An education that has much lower standards, less resources or less educated teachers does not have the same type of education as, for example, Harvard or MIT. These universities are considered the “best” universities and would mostly be a better choice than a random university in a small city in Sweden. The question everyone would ask themselves would be: “why would I choose a university with a lower reputation when there are universities with higher reputation?”. This could lead to less students participating in the traditional university life and committing to an open education instead. This would lead in to universities closing or reducing the amount of teachers needed at a university due to the lack of students.

Quality in open education is similar to the cultural and social understanding. The universities that have a better quality of education would have more students. The better universities would “obviously” have higher quality on their education which would simply attract more students to those universities.

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) can be used in higher educations because it provides a more flexible, affordable and it is more accessible for any person who are interested in learning (Yuan & Powell, 2013). This can give access to a higher education for more people and they are not solve constrained by their financial situation or their geological location.

Open education (such as online learning) and remote education is not the same thing, remote education would only allow specific personas (students in the course) to participate (Zawacki-Richter et al. 2020). Open education is an interdisciplinary field that has been growing and evolving over time (Zawacki-Richter et al. 2020). Open education be very effective by allowing more people participate in the education, but open education can also lack the interaction between the teacher and the students. In a study done by Er et al (2009) they suggest that there should be two learning types to supports the students’ needs called blended learning which allows both synchronous and asynchronous education. I have a hard time believing that open educations can be done both synchronously and asynchronously. For me open education is done asynchronously which means that there would not be an interaction between students and teachers.

I believe that open education would be good for people who wants to learn something asynchronously due to time restrictions, financial sudation or geological position, but it should not replace traditional teaching.

References

Er, E., Özden, M., & Arifoglu, A. (2009). A blended e-learning environment: A model proposition for integration of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning. International Journal Of Learning, 16(2), pp. 449-460.

Yuan, L., & Powell, S. J. (2013). MOOCs and open education: Implications for higher education.

Zawacki-Richter, O., Conrad, D., Bozkurt, A., Aydin, C. H., Bedenlier, S., Jung, I., … & Kerres, M. (2020). Elements of open education: an invitation to future research. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(3), 319-334.

Digital literacy is an important aspect of our lives as teachers, but also of our students. The digital world requires skills beyond using softwares and operate digital devices. Alkali et al. (2004) states that digital literacy requires us to have cognitive, motoric, emotional, and sociological skills which are complex and it would allow us to use the digital environment effectively. I spend most of my time in the “digital world”, both on my free time and at work (especially during the Covid-19 pandemic). I use multiple different system to, for example communicate, learn new things, and develop systems. The scenario reflects some aspects of me, I do not mix my personal life with my work life and the last time I used a blog was 13 years ago. This blog is basically completely new for me. I do not really share anything from my private life either. Facebook is something I have used frequently, but I have never posted or shared anything on it.  

During our meetings in the PBL group we chose to follow a model created by Hague and Payton (2010) that lists 8 different components of digital literacy. We focused on two important components based on the scenario, functional skills and cultural and social understanding. It was very interesting to see different perspectives on how we perceived digital literacy. I feel like these two components are quite important for students especially at the early stages of a university education.

I have always thought about students that might not be familiarly with the digital world and some of them have never use a computer before. During the two weeks we worked together I also “found” out that it is not only the functional skills keeping students back, it is also the cultural and social understanding. We have to view all studies, not only from their functional skills, but also from their cultural and social understanding. I knew that this existed, but I never really thought about it in any of my courses.

I might be blind in the sense that I use a lot of digital media and tools which could be the result that I believe that everyone should at least know how to use a computer, as well as some common programs. From the discussions we have had in the PBL group I realised that I could use different techniques to make sure my students feel comfortable with different digital tools. My personal suggestion to help the student and teacher in the scenario based of our discussions. For students:  

• Explore the digital world if you are not used to it
• Be willing to learn new things
• Learn to work collaborative
• Understand what type of culture does the “classroom” have
• Communicate with other students (and teachers)

For teachers:

• Be prepared and have a broad knowledge about different system (not only the one you will use in your course)
• Introduce yourself and spend time with the students. Get them all to the same level of digital literacy
• Give a lot of information and suggestions about the tools in advanced.
• Tell the students something personal about yourself (connect)
• Do not take your cultural beliefs for granted, allow everyone to express how they want and think of it as “normal”

As Alkali et al. (2004) stated, digital literacy requires more than just the concept of a computer. The students and teachers must be prepared in many way, because we live in a world where almost everyone uses the digital world. We need to understand it to be as effective as possible in life.

Alkali, Y. E., & Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2004). Experiments in digital literacy. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(4), 421-429.

Hague, C., & Payton, S. (2011). Digital literacy across the curriculum. Curriculum Leadership, 9(10).  Retrieved from http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/FUTL06/FUTL06.pdf