Månad: april 2021

Digital stickball and smalltalk?

We are now into topic 4. Designing blended learning. How to do it in the best way?

At my institution I will say we have maybe not extensive, but quite some experience of teaching online classes. For several years we for our pharmacy students ran parallell courses, with the same curriculum, the same learning outcomes and the same learning management system (LMS), but one almost fully online-version and one on-campus version. The campus students physically attended class, and the lectures were at the same time recorded and posted in the LMS for the distance course students to watch. We also used (and still use) a lot of flipped-classrom variants with following seminars and discussions.

No to the thing I want to discuss, an issue I thought a lot about back then, and still think about. How do we best make the distance students feel like they are a part of an actual class or group?

For our on-campus students, we at the start of each semester arranged an evening of playing stickball (rounders). The new students got to meet the second-, and third-year students and us teachers. We gathered in a park, played “kubb” and stickball, grilled sausages (grillkorv) and talked about both education, the university, the city and all kinds of other stuff. (As scandinavians we half the time discussed weather conditions I guess, that is what we mostly do ;-). I don´t remember if the distance learners were even invited..

Now I have just started up a new year long course for adult learners, and I will not be able to meet with them IRL until late autumn. I would love to be able to communicate with them, and even “meet” them in an more informal way, but how to do this digitally? Guess my question is: how do I arrange a digital evening of stickball and smalltalk?

Time to make a blog-friendly summary of topic 3: Learning in communities- networked collaborative learning. This time I will try to make a slightly shorter blogpost.

This topic, for me, was a bit easier to grasp compared to topic 2. As a nursing educator I have quite some experience of networking as we do a lot of work-based education. To interact and learn together with peers is an important part of nursing training. Even in my assigned mission av quality coordinator for the health educations at my institution, I know the importance of collaboration. I is true that collaboration and networking definitely can raise the quality. It is important to be able to optimize learning communitites even online, which of course is the focus of ONL211.

A common context

My deep dive for the investigation of the topic was about creating a common context. The context is an important part of an community of practice (CoP) [1]. What the context of a CoP are of course comes naturally if it is e.g. a research collaboration within a special field. But it also might be created or claryfied like e.g. within a group of students. One important part of the context is the physical context like the place or site (may of course be online) and common collaboration tools. The second part is the social context, where a joint commitment is required (or at least some guidelines on commitment and an agreement on who puts in the most effort).

In a previous course, I have together with colleagues worked with Gillan Salmons 5- stage model [2]. We then used the second step in the stair as a way of successfully visualise our common context. Got a hint from our co-facillitator that we will use tha 5 stage model later on in ONL, and I look forward to that.

My personal experience of PNLs

In relation to my own PNLs, these have mainly existed physically in relations too engaged and committed colleagues, a national pedagogy conference I attend annually and an educator Facebook community. Perhaps this course can be a kick-start for me to broaden into a larger network. Through ONL, I have already met so many people who contribute to my learning experience. I got many tips and ideas from being introduced to the work of Kay Oddone [3].

Our group work

As I wrote about before,my PBL-group PBL03 is the best bunch of people! We communicate so well, and share the experience by trying out all sorts of different tools. This time we have used ToolBox [4]. A very easy-to-learn and informative tool to visualise and share information. I think this tool can be excellent for presenting research data on comferences, but also for collaboration i groups.

Soon to fininsh- some words about theetchat!

Even this time, I attended the tweetchat. But this time only as a spectator. Due to time limits, I was only able to watch while at the same time using my hands for eating a hot bowl of soup. Fewer participants this time I noticed. Since last time I have reflected further on the uses of Twitter, and I have landed in my thoughts of not going to give it another try. I have come to a conclusion that it is better to use the chat function in Zoom to do things like this. As one of my fellow PBLers said: what you write on Twitter will 1) be broadcast out to all your followers + 2) stay there and be searchable forever. What I, or my students, will like to add to a specific topic does not need to be casted out, it is most of the time enough that it is kept in our own context or our network.

Ok, I will stop now.

I told you this would be a short text, but it got quite long anyway. I have so many thougts about this and could continue to write. But I end it here with a wish for a nice weekend!

References:

[1] Cambridge, D. and Suter, V. (2005). Community of Practice design guide: A step-by-step guide for designing & cultivating communities of practice in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). 

[2] The five stage model by Gilly Salmon. (Web page): https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

[3] Oddone, K. Hughes, H. and Lupton, M. (2019) Teachers as connected professionals: A model to support professional learning through personal learning networks. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 20 (3), pp. 102-120

[4] Link to the collaboration tool Learning Toolbox. (Web page): https://my.ltb.io/#/

Struggling to get a grasp..

Ok, a blog post about topic 2.. I realize that this will be a bit difficult for me to compose. I have met several ONL participants the recent week which have said that in their opinion, topic 2 was more tangible and easier for them to approach compared to topic 1. For me, it has been the straight opposite.  

I will be honest with you: I guess my uncertainty depends on that I have not reflected much on openness in education until now, and therefore I have not had a clear picture of what it really means and what it contains. I am here to learn! Besides teaching `regular` campus classes I work a lot with lifelong learning and commissioned training but always on a closed learning platform. The courses I teach are surely done on demand, and for a very specific group of people, but beyond that there is really nothing open about what I do.

Operating in Sweden, there is probably a picture that a lot of what we do in the universities is to be regarded as open per se. As a presumptive student, you are free to apply for higher education as you like. Although basic eligibility for higher studies is needed, and in some cases specific qualifications in the form of subject areas almost anyone can apply. But when you start thinking about it, it may not be as free as it first looks. You have to compete for places with other applicants, and the studies only start at two specific times during the year. Many educations are available at a distance, but you often have to go to campus for close meetings, labs and similar. In terms of payment, as education is free of charge in Sweden, it can in some way be considered fully open. One good thing about that is that you do not have to come from a special background or social class to study. I liked the thoughts of  Ragupathi K. (2020) (the article we were suggested to read for this topic), and the parallels to the coffee house model [1].  I thinks this connects to social justice which is a good thing.

Finding a way through topic 2

So what exactly is openness in education? I have probably seen this as a path with a lot of obstacles. Who owns the material? What about plagiarism? Can anyone take open material and use it as their own, and distribute it? This topic sure started a lot of questions in my head. That said, I think I have explained now how I faced topic 2 as a blank sheet. My first thoughts was:  where do I start?

I started by listening to the podcast posted on the ONL community page 2 [2], and listened to Maha Balis webinar (what a fantastic researcher and lecturer – so inspiring!) Luckily I have a very nice and supportive PBL group with lots of different experiences and perspectives, and we undertook the topic together. The diversity of the group also made me realize the different global aspects of OER. We worked again with the FISH document and a Miro board where we gathered our thoughts and the results of our investigation. This time we also worked with some liberating structures to help us collect our thoughts [3]. Great thanks to Sarah who initiated the work on that. This is something I will surely test together with my students.

My take-homes. So far. (Yes, I am somewhat of a slow learner).

From the group discussions and our collected material I have learned a lot about OER. I have not really landed my thoughts on this yet, and actually think I should let it take the time it takes. But I can surely see more advantages now and not only challenges as before. I have learned how to think about copyright and material, and how labeling is important.

Content curation

Another thing I take with me is thoughts about the emerging change of the roles of the teacher and the student. When we presented our group work, we chose a spider and it`s web as a metaphor. The spider here is the student, the web is the knowledge it spins it around. Sometimes there are holes in the web (power outs or internet limitations) but there are still opportunities for OER. The teacher’s role in this becomes to provide content curation. Sort, structure and lead the student towards hers or his goals. Forward along the path, or when lost: back on the path. Helps them to move forward, points in the right direction.

ThingLink

Last but not least: I will also write a few words about the tool we used this time. ThingLink. I loved it. So fun and easy to use, and very graphic. Perfect to combine with my main area which is anatomy and physiologi; the appearance and functions of the human body. Super easy to connect different materials as movies, texts and pictures. Unfortunately, it was not possible to collaborate in the tools with the free license. Try it!

Reflection week- I really needed that!

Yes, I really needed this reflection week. Sometimes you need to get of the horse and take a break before you sit back up and gallop away.

Thanks for reading 🙂

References:

[1] Ragupathi, K. (2020). Being open: drawing parallels with the Coffee House model.

[2] Podcast on open education by Kiruthika Ragupathi from the National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/openeducation/audio-podcast/

[3] Webpage on Liberating Structures: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/