Lessons learnt - Future practice

The ONL course has come to an end and my feelings are a bit ambiguous. First of all, I have a sense of relief. It has been weeks of hard work since I have tried to follow the course at the same time as I have tried to manage my regular work. Secondly, it feels sad to leave the group that I have worked with. When starting this course I had never engaged in group work online. So, this was new to me and really exciting. I also knew from my own experience, both as a student and as a teacher, that group work can sometimes fail miserably. And my preconceptions about group work online was that this would probably be more difficult than working in a group offline.

Having finished the course, I still think that group work online is more difficult than group work offline. For instance, we lose a lot of visual cues when we just see each other’s faces on our computer screens. Sure, we can nod to each other to show agreement but non-verbal communication is so much more than that. Nevertheless, this course has indeed shown me that group work online is definitely possible. I had the privilege to become part of a very well-functioning group. We have managed to have great discussions online and we have really developed our abilities to work collaboratively. At the same time I know that the success of our group is partly connected to the fact that we have all worked hard.

Recently, I found a study by Chang and Kang (Chang B, Kang H. Challenges facing group work online, Distance Education, 2016, Vol 37, No 1, 73-88) about difficulties in online group work. This study reported four important challenges to online group work. One challenge was lack of commitment from individual group members. When it comes to my own group I think that we have all worked hard and tried our best to contribute to the work of the group. Of course we have struggled because of our other tasks in life, but we have still tried to put our energies into this course. So, I would say that we have really conquered the challenge of lack of commitment. The three other challenges reported by Chang and Kang (2016) were problems with online communication, lack of structure for the actual group work and lack of leadership in the groups. In my opinion, these obstacles had already been taken care of by our course coordinators. We were provided with great tools for online communication (with good timing of online meetings), great structure when it came to online work (e.g. the FISh document) and we knew from the beginning that each topic should have a leader and a co-leader. So, I would say that the success of our group was partly because of our own hard work but also partly because the course coordinators created an environment where we were likely to succeed. 

In conclusion, I think that the actual experience of working in a group online has been the most important thing for me in this course. Because I have now experienced the power of good collaborative online group work I am determined to introduce this type of work to my own students. I think it’s fruitful for teachers to sometimes step back and become students again (like all of us have done in this course). When you have worked as a teacher for a while it’s very easy to lose the student perspective. You simply forget how it is to be a student. So, I think that having experienced the ONL course as a student will definitely help me when I try to introduce this type of group work to my own students. It will improve my course design and improve my support to my students because I know that they may find it hard and demanding. But I also know what they will achieve if they continue to work hard and develop their collaborative group work skills.              

Design for Online and Blended Learning

I have just realized the importance of reflection! I want my students to reflect but when it comes to myself I tend to do other things than reflecting. Maybe, it’s because of a busy life and a heavy workload. I do the things I am supposed to do but seldom experience that I can afford to spend time on reflection. In my opinion, lack of time for reflection might result in ourselves having preconceived ideas that we fail to challenge. For instance, I have worked with PBL for several years and because of this I am very familiar with this way of teaching (or at least I think I am).

So, I would like to share two preconceived ideas of mine that I have challenged during this topic of the ONL course. First, PBL might sometimes get a bit fuzzy for students. And my preconceived idea about this has been that fuzziness is just a natural part of PBL. By searching the internet I have also found other people thinking about PBL in somewhat the same way. For instance I found a blog where one teacher described the views of one of his colleagues saying that PBL is inherently unstructured. I guess that our views partly has to do with our own experiences and partly with the notion described by Kek and Huijser (2015) that PBL comes in many different shapes and that this might result in the feeling that you can do whatever you like. It’s still PBL. Nevertheless, during this topic of the ONL course, I have challenged my views and realized the importance of structure. I have found the five stage model for online course design very appealing and this model includes a lot of structure. So, PBL does not need to be fuzzy. In fact, I know now that I could improve my teaching in my PBL environment by just adding more structure.

My second pre-conceived idea is about course introduction. For some reason I have had the idea that it must be beneficial for students with courses starting at full speed. In this way, the student’s realize the level of the course from the beginning and do not loose motivation because of inactivity. However, the five stage model has once again convinced me that my approach is not the best one. The five stage model instead focus on a smooth welcoming and making everyone familiar with the tools used in the course. And I know this is beneficial because this was just the way the ONL course started about two months ago. In this way, I got the chance to be well prepared before we actually started to study the contents of the course.

I would like to finish this blog post by concluding that this topic really has challenged my thoughts about course design. Hopefully, I will be able to implement my new thoughts in future courses.

Learning in communities – networked collaborative learning

I have used problem based learning (PBL) in a Campus based learning environment for several years, both as a student and as a teacher. And from a personal view I would say that a well-functioning tutorial group is a perfect example of good collaborative learning. If different students choose different literature in order to answer the same question, we should in theory achieve a good collaborative environment. Different literature may have different answers to the same question. This could in turn contribute to the development of knowledge that is something more than just putting different pieces together.

So what are the challenges for a PBL tutorial group? How can we support the group so that it manage to work collaboratively? I would say that many of the challenges that we meet in a Campus based environment could be directly translated into an online environment. I read an interesting article by Capdeferro and Romero about frustration in online collaborative learning. The authors argue that frustration is common among online learners and that this has a negative impact on their studies. And I must say that this is not really different from Campus based studies. I have met a lot of students that are frustrated about the PBL group work. Until now I have thought that this is the way it has to be. It takes a while to get used to PBL so it is not strange that you sometimes get a bit frustrated. So, I have looked upon frustration as an element that is part of PBL and nothing that you can do anything about.

However, by reading the article by Capdeferro and Romero I have realized that we really do not want our students to be frustrated. It is bad for their studies and would of course interfere with the ability of a group to be well-functioning and work collaboratively. So, how do we make our students less frustrated? Capdeferro and Romero have identified several factors that make online learners frustrated. The most important factor seem to be connected to the contributions from different students to the work of the group. Students get of course frustrated if some group members do not contribute at all or just contribute to a small extent. Once again, going back to a Campus based environment I experience the same type of frustration with my students.

So, what are the conclusions from this? Well, according to Capdeferro and Romero, frustration could be decreased by teaching the students about group work and in this way making them more competent in their abilities to work together with others. Also, the teachers need to clarify what they expect from each student in the group work.

Of course, group work is complex and what I have focused on here are just a few points that would have impact on group performance. But I think that if the students know what we expect from them and if they have the skills to work in a group we will definitely increase the chances for good collaborative learning.                     

Open Learning - Sharing and Openness

I must admit, I am not that open when it comes to my teaching. I do discuss education with colleagues and I do explain my thoughts on how to teach a particular subject. But, I seldom share my actual teaching material with my colleagues. I only give this material to my students.

So, with this in mind I must say that I have totally changed my views during this topic. I listened to David Wiley that argued that without sharing there is no education. And from this I realized that sharing is not only about sharing materials with students. It is also about sharing with colleagues. I personally have a lot of teaching material that I am sure could be of benefit for other teachers. And if it is of benefit for other teachers, then it will benefit more students. So, indirectly more students get access to the things that I am trying to teach. And that would be awesome!

Having realized that I am probably ready to be open I soon also realized some possible issues. First of all, I live in an environment where colleagues do not readily share material with each other. How would my colleagues then react if I suddenly started to share? Another question that came into my mind was the question of reusability? My material is created for a specific context and even though my colleagues teach similar subjects they might have another context. In other words, is it possible to use my material in the settings of another teacher?

Having raised those issues for myself I got really pleased when I read Chapter 6 in The battle for open - How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory by Martin Weller. It became clear to me that my issues are common issues that others have raised long before me. Cultures with teachers that don´t really want to share is nothing strange. And regarding reusability, Weller refers to something called Wiley's paradox which states that learning material needs to have context in order to be useful for learners. Wiley's paradox also states that learning material should have as little context as possible in order to be reusable. So, we need both context and reusability for our open learning material but, according to Wiley's paradox, context and reusability seems impossible to combine.

In conclusion, I realize that there is a lot of work for me before I am able to share my material effectively. At this time, I don´t know how to do it. But, at least I know that others have struggled before me. Hopefully, I can learn from the stories that they share.