My second ONL course in one year!

I finnished my ONL181 course last December, and now I am in ONL191 already. It must have been a fun course, you think? And I can sincerely say that YES, it was fun and I learned so much that I want to learn more.
What did I learn then? Well, a lot about Online Network Learning, about PBL and collaboration, about networking all over the world and som pretty cool new tools I can use in my teaching. Some I learned by reading and looking for information from online, some I learned from the webinars, but most I learned from the group. By discussing and collaborating, sometimes we were all quite buzy with our work, but we still collaborated and did the course together!
I have a previous blog with the heading ”Cooperative, Collaborative, PBL or TBL” where I have collected some articles and websites about collaborative and cooperative learning. You might want to check that out?
Where am I now? Well back in the ONL community as a co-facilitator. It is going to be so fun to be able to help and support the new ONL group and I have the best facilitator to guide me in this group! I am looking forward to learn a lot more again during this journey!

Lessons learnt – Future practice

Little did I understand what a journey this fall would be! My own development in digital literacy has been tremendous. I would like to describe my starting level at “Skills” in Beetham and Sharpe’s pyramid model of digital literacy development. (JISC infoNet 2014)

Pyramid model of DL development

I found a blog about Georgie, a five years old blogger and vlogger. This is a comic strip but many of the comic strips are spot on! Like this one about digital natives, immigrants and retards. Very funny (I know, not a scientific site, but couldn’t resist). (Being Five 2018)

digitalliteracycomics

During the second topic I came to the awareness that if we want to share, we have to stop keeping it all to ourselves and being afraid of everyone “stealing” our material. Without sharing there is no education (Wiley 2010) and expertice can be given without given away.

I think topic 3 was the eye-opening week for me. I realized how comfortable I was in my own courses, doing what I do best, lecturing! Well, I called my courses blended courses, but the digital part of the course was mostly sharing my power points and posting links and YouTube videos on our course site. Not much of online learning or a digital course.

I was hooked on collaborative connectivism where the internet creates new opportunities in learning and sharing information. The teacher’s role is no more lecturing, but more of being a guide or facilitator. (Downes 2010, Siemens 2005)

I also learned that you have to let go. To let go from your old course to be able to build up a new course that is truly an online course. To be brave. Converting your old material into an online course is not building an online course. Another difficult thing is the difference between the teaching presence vs teacher presence. (Garrison, Anderson & Archer 2000; Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison 2013)

Online Network Learning is not about making it easier for the teacher or saving resources. ONL is about involving students and turning them into thinking individuals, make them collaborate and unite their strengths to produce knowledge.

The ONL course has come to the end, but with everything I learned during the journey, my thinking about course building will never be the same. I want to be more open, I want to offer more online learning and I will start developing my course for next fall during the spring and we’ll see how it goes!

Thank y’all!

 

 REFERENCES

Being Five 2018. Found 8.12.2018 at http://beingfive.blogspot.com/

Downes, S. (2010). New technology supporting informal learning. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 2(1)

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. 2000. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment. Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher  Education, 2(2-3), pp 87-105

JISC infoNet 2014. Developing digital literacies. Found 7.10.2018 http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1)

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M. & Garrison, D. R. 2013. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

Wiley, T. 2010. Open education and the future. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M

Online and blended learning

This topic was all about why I joined this course! To get help and get hints from my peers how to build an online or blended course. We discussed in the tweetchat about how to turn a traditional course into an online course and the most important thing, in my opinion, is not to convert the content into online material just like that. It is about letting go from your old course and building something new. To be brave.

One of the most important things in having your course as an online course, is to be present. Now talking about teaching presence as in the Community of Inquiry Framework. The teacher should set the climate and goals, be the one pushing into the right direction if students get lost and also support whenever the group needs support. Found an innovative modified image about the Community of Inquiry Framework (Figure 1) and chose to use that one instead of the original. (Garrison, Anderson & Archer 2000; Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison 2013)

communityofInquiry

Figure 1: Community of Inquiry framework (modified) (Forsythe 2018)

I think the hardest thing for me as a teacher is the teaching presence vs teacher presence. Being there but still not interfering if not asked to do so. To be a facilitator, to help to bring about the outcome by providing assistance, guidance and supervision, not to be a part of the learning community or group.

Conole and Brown (2018) discusses the impact of open education in an article. They present a numerous different models and frameworks in their article so it’s worth reading! Conole also presents the 7C’s of Learning Design Framework in the same article (Figure 2) (Conole 2014).

7Cs of Learning Design Framework

Figure 2: The 7Cs of Learning Design (Conole & Brown 2018; Conole 2014)

The framework is a result of a study where teachers had to describe how they designed their courses, where they got inspiration and guidance and how they shared their design. This framework was the one I connected with the most. The framework seemed structured and suited my way of thinking the best.

I could go on and on with different brilliant models and frameworks, but I think I will stop here for now and get back in my next blog. Have a great end of November.

 

 

REFERENCES

Conole, G. 2014. The 7Cs of Learning Design – a new approach to rethinking design practice. The 9th International Conference on Networked Learning. Article edited by Bayne, S:, Jones, C:, de Laat, M:, Rydberg, T: & Sinclair, C.

Conole, G. & Brown, M. 2018. Reflecting on the Impact of the Open Education Movement. Journal of Learning for Development. 3 (5)

Forsythe, G. 2018. Community of Inquiry Framework image. Flickr. Found 25.11.2018 on https://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/14283436502/

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. 2000. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment. Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher  Education, 2(2-3), pp 87-105

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M. & Garrison, D. R. 2013. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

 

Learning in Communities – Networked Collaborative Learning

I would like to start by introducing what I do for living. I am a teacher at an University of Applied Sciences where I have the privilege to create the future nurses. The main topics I teach in are clinical care and medication administration. I have ordinary lectures, skill stations where they learn how to do things and simulations where they get to use their knowledge in taking care of the patient. That was a short introduction, now back to what I want to reflect on.

By now I have realized how comfortable I have been with my courses at the University where I teach. “Doing as I always have done”. Taking the safe path. As the it-support at my university use to say: “If it works, don’t fix it!”. Serving the students with lectures, sharing my lectures on a platform, showing them YouTube videos every now and then… that’s teaching, isn’t it? But what about learning?

Do I want my students to be passive and only learn things by listening to me, or do I want to turn them into thinking, creative individual that want to participate in the community, to make it a little better for their children, to be part of creating the cure for cancer? How can I prepare them for those challenges?

I think collaborative learning is a way of helping students to realize that to achieve the goal, collaboration towards a shared purpose is needed. (Frenks 2018) They must learn to work together, to use each other’s special skills and knowledge, but also to learn how to share different perspectives. (Kozar 2010)

Collaborative learning can be learning online. For the learning to be effective, the group must learn to interact and be social online. To be social online differs from being social face-to-face and not many people are formally trained how to work together in an online environment. Specific pedagogical benefits of collaborative learning include development of critical thinking skills, co-creation of knowledge, reflection and transformative learning. (Blaschke, Brindley, Walti 2009)

I found a study about collaborative connectivism that I found quite interested. Connectivism is a learning theory that explains how the internet have created new opportunities for people to learn and share information across the world, online. Much learning can happen across peer networks that take place online. The teacher’s role is to guide students to information and support their learning. (Downes 2010, Siemens 2005)

I can see a lot common features in our ONL181 course to connectivism and this is the type of course I would be happy to build for my students. I can’t say I am ready for it yet, but I’m getting there and half way through the course I feel much more comfortable with the thought of it than I felt before this course. Guess I am learning and slowly getting more competent in this?

 

REFERENCES

Blaschke, L. M., Brindley, J. E., Walti, C. 2009. Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment. The International Review of Research in Open Distributed Learning. 3 (10)

Downes, S. (2010). New technology supporting informal learning. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 2(1)

Frenks, F., Tenorio, G. P., Sharp, S. 2018. Online collaboration webinar. ONL181 course. Webinar held 31.10.2018

Kozar, O. 2010. Towards Better Group Work: Seeing the Difference between Cooperation and Collaboration. English Teaching Forum. Nr 2

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1)

Open Learning – Sharing and Opening up courses

My journey continues. Wondering what waits behind the next corner…

I have read a lot about open learning, open education, distance learning and online learning. A month ago, I would have thought they were all the same, but now I have learned the differences and it is interesting, very interesting. I will focus on open learning in my blog today though.

Circosta (2015) talks about open learning classroom environment as “knocking down the walls” and opening the minds. That, I think, goes for both students and teachers. I think it is much easier for students to open their minds and work together while seeking for solutions, than it is for teachers. Especially if “you have always done it this or that way…”. The teachers must create open spaces for learning and help students to ask the questions and find the ideas.

Open learning means teaching material that is freely shared. It means being generous and overcoming the inner us saying “It is mine!”, learning not to be selfish. With no sharing there is no education, says David Wiley (2010) in his YouTube clip. “Expertise is nonrivalrous. It can be given without being given away.” We have to channge from a cultural of withholding to a cultural of generosity and sharing.

I found a clip on YouTube with Highlights of the OpenLearning Conference in 2017. Prof Dr Mahnaz Moallem says that we must focus on the 4C’s in open learning: Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication and Collaboration. Brooke Hahn points out that it is about getting the students active, to make them create and share something and have discussions around the themes. Prof Dr Gráinne Conole underlines the importance of teaching students to learn how to learn. Some great pics that were point on the essence of open learning.

Open learning is a great way of learning, but the students must take responsibility for what they learn, how they learn, where they learn, how quickly they learn, who will help them and also when they have their learning assessed (SSCoaching 2018). This means they must focus on their own learning and understand they are responsible of it.

I did a search in scientific magazines about open learning. Gaskell (2009) saw collaboration between institutions or universities as a positive outcome from open learning environments. Gaskell & Mills (2014) also discussed the accessibility to courses as a positive outcome. With accessibility they meant that students that have to work during day or have families can participate whenever it suits them and disabled students can access courses without worrying about how to get to the university, the same goes for soldiers and prisoners. Open learning gives flexibility to studies. Clinton (2018) also points out that it is cost-effective when students don’t have to buy their books.

Again two weeks filled with information followed by comprehension and new ideas about teaching. A good week!

 

REFERENCES

Circosta, C. 2015. Open Learning Classroom Environment. YouTube https://youtu.be/j8an8-S5hBQ

Clinton, V. 2018. Cost Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in Psychology: A Narrative Review of the Literature. Psychology Learning & Teaching. 0 (0), pp 1-17

Gaskell, A. 2009. Concepts of teaching and learning: revisiting issues in open, distance and e-learning. (Editorial). Open Learning. 2 (24) pp. 109-112

Gaskell, A., Mills R. 2014. The quality and reputation of open, distance and e-learning: what are the challenges? Open Learning. 3 (29), pp 190-205

Openlearningcom 2018. OpenLearning Conference 2017 Highlights. YouTube https://youtu.be/AtJHEQgN1og

SSCoaching 2018. Difference between Open Schooling and Distance Learning? https://sscoaching.in/Difference-open-distance-learning-_1224.html

Wiley, T. 2010. Open education and the future. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M

Digital literacy – nothing new for me here… Or?

These were my first feelings and thoughts when I started this course. Frustration was another feeling. Will I learn anything useful in this course?

After digging into all the material and listening to the webinars I had to admit that I was wrong. Very wrong. I deserve a slap in the face! I’m glad I gave a slap to myself this early in the course. So, let’s have a new start.

I had no idea the pedagogy and psychology behind digital literacy would be this interesting. I am so happy that the other participants in my PBL6 group opened my eyes and mind to see things from different angles. There is always something new to learn and if you know something, you can always deepen your knowledge.

The article about developing digital literacies (JISC infoNet 2014) with its image about the seven elements of digital literacies (DL) gave me a whole new aspect of the complex and interesting world of DL. Never thought about it having so many different elements. Beetham and Sharpe’s pyramid model of literacy development model describes so well my, my mothers and my children’s stage of DL. My mother on a level of access ad awareness in some things and skills in some things. Me myself on a level of skills and practice, while my children are on a level of identity in most of things.

I found White & Cornus’ (2011) article about digital natives and Immigrants vs visitors and residents very interesting. I really don’t feel like a digital immigrant even if I was born when we used analog phones and read the information from books. I prefer the use of visitor and resident instead and feel like I am a visitor most of the time, but maybe more a resident in my private life, because yes, I do see my professional life and private life as two different things and want to keep them like that. Maybe that improves that I am a visitor, still trying to distinguish between private and professional me.

I also found some interesting material googling around. Levy (2018) had listed the 7 coolest things digitally literate teachers are doing in their classrooms. There are many cool apps out there that I have never heard of. Some of them quite interesting, maybe I have to try them!

 

REFERENCES

JISC infoNet 2014. Developing digital literacies. Found 7.10.2018 http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

JISC The Design Studio. Definition of digital literacies. Found 7.10.2018 http://web.archive.org/web/20140720191009/http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/59974972/definition%20of%20digital%20literacies

JISC The Design Studio. DL conceptual frameworks. Found 7.10.2018  http://web.archive.org/web/20141011220556/http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com:80/w/page/46601840/DL%20conceptual%20frameworks

Levy, L. A. 2018. The 7 coolest things digitally literate teachers are doing in their classrooms. USC Rossier Online. Found 15.10.2018 https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/digital-literacy-in-classrooms/

White, D. S., Le Cornu, A. 2011. Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday. Peer-Reviewed Journal of the Internet. Found 7.10.2018 http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

 

Cooperative, Collaborative, PBL or TBL

I haven’t been using PBL in my courses before so I am not familiar with it. When I started to read about it I realized that it was more complicated than that.

The articles provided by the ONL181 course were quite interesting. It was nice to have the first article by Davidson, Major & Michaelsen that introduced us to the other articles. You quickly got a good picture of what the different methods are about.

I found the articles about Team-Based Learning most interesting. I have used flipped classroom as a pedagogical method in some of my courses, but now I actually have another name for it – Team-Based Learning. I have thought about the same questions as Wallace, Walker, Braseby & Sweet has about how I can assess if the students are prepared when coming to my classes, and methods or activities that would be the most effective to deepening their understanding. I googeled for some more information and found an organization of educators “Team-Based Learning Collaborative” and I think I will join that organization. Citation of their introduction page: “The Team-Based Learning Collaborative connects you to an international network of people who are knowledgeable and passionate about Team-Based Learning, and that offers teaching resources as well as professional development, to make your life as an educator more rewarding, interesting, and fun.”

We had our first PBL group meeting online this week. I am a part of a great group and I am sure we will have some interesting months ahead with plenty of work but also lots of laughs. Since we are all working day time, we will probably mostly utilize cooperative learning when working with our topics, but we need to meet online too and I guess that will be collaborative learning as a method.

I like the thoughts of Kagan about the chewing gum; that we need to chew our gum really good to maximize our learning! The neuroscience approach to learning is really interesting (well, I am a nurse so this approach to learning makes sense to me). He discusses the cooperative method, but if I understood his acronym PIES corect, the last principle is close to or basicly the same as collaborative learning?

Read some of the articles about collaborative learning and found the article of Cooper & Robinson most interesting. The cognitive scaffolds, temporarily supports, could be used in our PBL group when we have our online meetings to make sure everyone are on the same page.

 

REFERENCES

Cooper, J. L., Robinson, P. 2014. Using classroom assessment and cognitive scaffolding to enhance the power of small-group learning. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 149-161

Davidson, N., Major, C. H., Michaelsen L. K. 2014. Small-Group Learning in Higher Education— Cooperative, Collaborative, Problem-Based, and Team-Based Learning:
An Introduction by the Guest Editors.  Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 1-6

Kagan, S. 2014. Kagan Structures, Processing, and Excellence in College Teaching.  Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 119-138

Team-Based Learning Collaborative. http://www.teambasedlearning.org/

Wallace M., Walker J., Braseby A. & Sweet M. 2014. “Now, What Happens During Class?” Using Team-Based Learning to Optimize the Role of Expertise Within the Flipped Classroom. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 253-273

 

Picture in the blog taken from the Oxford University press. English Language Teaching Global Blog. https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2018/02/19/flipped-classroom-approach/

Confused? Oh yes!

Let the journey begin. Thanks ONL 172 for the advices to our course! Especially these posts “calms me down” a little right now:

  • Let yourself get overwhelmed… don’t panic in the beginning!
  • DON’T PANIC!! – My panic level starts to grow a little by now…
  • Keep remembering “Good enough” is OK – that’s more like it
  • Prepare for the start of the course. Look at the old course and get an idea what it is all about. – can I do that?
  • challenge yourself and be brave – I’ll try my best!

Guess I’ll be spending a fair amount of time here in the course now in the beginning so I’ll get a good start. Hope to find that time, that is…

 

I finally got into the course

Had troubles to get accepted to the course and now I am wondering if I missed something? No time for worrying about that, I’m in now!

If anyone wonder about the name, it simply is a cat with an unicorn horn. Had to come up with a name for my blog and had a magnet with this catcorn on my cabin door, so picked that. 🙂

Will be nice to meet y’all in the course! See ya!