Entangled and Digital Learning

Lessons learnt and future practice (through the metaphors of traffic situations)

In this last blog post I will summarize my main take-aways from the ONL course and also reflect about future steps. Let me start by a meme although this picture doesn’t show the whole truth about reasons for converting to online or distance courses with blended learning (for other reasons see my last blog post).

Main take-aways for digital transformation

The course started with two weeks focusing on getting started and getting to know each other – a design in accordance with the frameworks of Communities of Practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), Learning Communities (West & Williams, 2018) and Communities of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000; Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013). During these two weeks, aspects such as access and relationships, a kind of engagement with participants for building a sense of fellowship and community were in focus. We also tried to get a grip on, engage with the vision and function of working in a community, as well as to develop a common ground for our collaboration.

During next two weeks we started to engage with the content and the goals of Online participation and digital literacies, as well as deepening our relationships in terms of social and cognitive presence. At this stage we were insecure about how to work in the PBL-group, and about the expectations of the end product. Afterwards we could see that this two weeks set the routines for our group although we tried to break out once or twice. Having facilitators present as well was a security, still I believe this is really difficult to manage within an ordinary course as Bates (2019) says when discussing teachers’ roles as facilitators as crucial in online learning: “There are though some limitations … it does not scale easily, requiring highly knowledgeable and skilled instructors, and a limited number of learners per instructor”. (chapter 4). To be inspired to reflect on, and analyze, your own engagement in digital environments as a professional and on a personal level, in terms of being a visitor or an inhabitant (see White, 2014; White & Le Cornu, 2011) was a really good start to the course. The eight guiding principles of digital literacies pointed out by Dough Belshaw in his ted-talk made me reflect upon both my skills and lack of skills but also about my digital identity, both as consumer and/or producer, but also about my profile, what I want to be visible or not, which thus connects to topic 2, Open learning-Sharing and Openess.

This was a topic that I found a bit hard to engage in as it was both complex and at the same time wide. I believe getting to know the rules of Creative Commons is my top take away which I have lent on in my use and re-use of pictures since then.

The third and fourth topic about Learning in communities- networked collaborative learning and Design for online and blended learning became very intertwined for me. My learning style is to follow threads, trying to get a grip on theories and concepts (which were part of both topics) and then put them in relation to each other and my previous knowledge in order to create some sense out of it. I then need to conclude the implications before going into how to use them. I therefore worked somewhat simultaneously with these two topics.

As the process went further, we became more and more open and our emotional presence became more visible as we had got to know each other better. We started to share narratives and experiences in a higher degree and had some good laughers. When having lived the process, or as we concluded in one of the memes we created, built the railway while running the train, we could relate the theories and content to our own process although it felt a bit messy sometimes (like one of the other Memes with a roundabout built as a square) – see our SWAY with the Memes here.

Since I got sick one week, I really didn’t have the time to sort things out as much as I would have liked, and that would have been great as I usually end up with a lot of readings and new knowledge that I find interesting and fruitful. I am blessed with a curious mind a motor that drives me to understand. When writing the blog post for topic 3 and 4 I felt like the students who use to have difficulties in killing their darlings as they want to show everything they learnt in their exams. But, in this course I was a student so I forgive myself – I have learnt a lot although my blog posts are a bit unsorted.

At the same time, I think all the content that I wanted to understand and the different perspectives that the references contributed with, will be important for me as an educational leader in the future – which leads me to the next heading in the blog post.

Future steps

As I work mainly as an educational leader in our teacher education program for early childhood education and care teachers my role will be to inspire and support the teachers working in the program in their re-design. We have recently had a workshop about online tools with our university’s instructional designers. My colleagues haven’t had the opportunity to attended the ONL-course and as it requires quite a lot of time and engagement I think I will have to share my new knowledge and reflections with them both spontaneously and contnously but also in an organized way. I have therefore started to write an application for funding to be able to work in our team with developing our program and courses. I am really looking forward to that! I think it is important to not focus only on design or technology, but also going back to our scientifically grounded views about learning and knowledge, creating our vision on that and design towards that. While we live our utopia it becomes true. As we all are in the sbject of education we have a lot of knowledge in that area, but maybe have to update ourselves with theories about online and blended learning as our reality today looks different from yesterday.

I usually use the metaphore of the GPS when talking to the teacher students about the importance of being knowledgeable about theories of learning and to continuously update those. For me theories are likae maps, that help you to orientate and choose direction. You need to update your GPS in order to be able to drive safe and responsible (in relation to your mission). I mean, trying to drive in a foreign country with signs in a language you maybe have difficulties to understand (and maybe also with a car for left-hand driving in a left-hand traffic country) is difficult enough with an updated GPS. I can hear the voice: “Take the third exit in the roundabout” and still I can’t see three exits, and start sweating by stress.

The one of you that have read my earlier blogs know that this doesn’t mean that we uncompromising shall drive on main streets or follow the map in every situation. I believe that what good teachers are best at are having a well developed sense of feeling for when and how to improvise, change, make use of experience and go by the flow. On unknown routes.

I will end this blog-post with one of my favourite citation from unknown:

“Experience, knowledge and wisdom – to guide you in thought and deed”

and with a celebration to this course and my PBL-group and myself for finalizing it (click the picture below for seeing the action (animation). And if you wonder how far we can go – What do you recon? No limits of course!

Thank you for reading! / Susanne

References:

Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2^nd edition). Available at: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Belshaw, Dough (2012). The essential elements of digital literacies: Doug Belshaw at TEDxWarwick, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78

Creative Commons [website] available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Lave, J. & Wenger (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42374-8

Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

Click to access 120229_99Z_Vaughan_et_al_2013-Teaching_in_Blended_Learning_Environments.pdf

West, R. E. & Williams, G. (2018). I don’t think that word means what you think it means: A proposed framework for defining learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development. Available online at https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/learning_communities

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practices. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66363-2.

White, D. (2014). Visitors and residents.

White, D., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: a new typology for online engagement, Fi®st moñd@y, Peer-reviewed journal on the internet.

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

Considering Communities of Inquiry and Blended learning for Design of Distance Education

Covid has made more pupils and students working online and the presence among students that usually not attend every lesson has increased due to this fact. Still, many students express feelings of loneliness and a too big responsibility to drive your learning “by your self”. I do believe that we can better prepare our courses and support our students in online learning, wheteher it depends on Covid or are planed distance courses. In the following, I will explore the framework of Community of Incuiry (CoI) as a continuation of my elaboration about Learning Communities and Personal Learning Network in my latest blog. I will then move on to blended learning as a concept and how to design for blended and online effective, successful and happy learning. The happy-word is borrowed from Salmon (2013) and I really want to emphasize it as it is rather unusual to see such words in combination with successful and/or effective.

Community of Inquiry (CoI)

Let me start with a quote or two. “An educational community of inquiry is a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding.” (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000). According to Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) “The premise of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is that higher education is both a collaborative and an individually constructivist learning experience”. According to Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) “The premise of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is that higher education is both a collaborative and an individually constructivist learning experience”.

Three key elements or “crucial prerequisites for a successful higher educational experience” (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000), captured by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are social, cognitive, and teaching presence. As Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) express, social presence embraces aspects such as trust, fellowship, communication, while cognitive presence can be described as where participants create meaning and interpret the content through reflection and conversations. Finally, but actually the prerequisite for the other two is teaching presence, which is connected to the design and teachers facilitating, supporting and fostering the educational event. As the picture from Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000) below shows, students’ engagement with other participants, with the content and with the goal/direction are surrounded by these three dimensions of presence. In addition, the design (of structure and tools etc), the context, the standards keep the different aspects together, framing them. In the intersections, discourse is supported, wanted climate are set and in a way, learning is regulated.

Illustration of Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000). On this site you will also find some useful tips on how to develop teacher, social and cognitive presence.

Cleveland-Innes and Campbell (2012) have explored emotions in online learning environments and they argue that emotional presence should be part of the fundamental aspects of online CoI. They have re-considered the above model by Garrison et al. as they emphasize that not acknowledging the role of emotions in learning when working with developing and reframing education would a mistake as emotions are central in human experience.

Cleveland-Innes (2020) is also emphasizing engagement. In her ONL presentation she discusses what engagement might be. She points out that “Learner engagement is a measure that reflects the quantity and quality of a learner’s participation in their courses and every other aspect of their educational program. Also, it echoes a learner’s interaction and cooperation with co-learners and instructors. In other words, learner engagement is the measure of a potentially successful learning experience for everyone concerned.”. She suggests a link for reading more about learner engagement which I found interesting and inspiring.

As I see it, the model for successful learning in communities of inquiry (CoI), discussed above, can be connected to the four main characteristics of learning communities online pointed out by West & Williams (2018): access, relationships, values and function, which I write about in my earlier blog. In addition, Salmon (2013) present a five-stage model for successful online learning that coincides with the framework of CoI, and central aspects of learning communities.

Five-stage-model by Salmon (2013).

Design for blended learning

Before diving in to design I would like to say something about blended learning. The teacher education programs that I am working with as an educational leader and teacher successively have converted into distance education with a few face-to-face meetings at campus and the rest as online activities, synchronous and asynchronous. We have made these changes in order to attract students from the region and whole country, as well as for the purpose of creating a more flexible education in terms of how and when to study. As such, our programs are built upon the idea of blended learning although I believe we can further develop that idea as much of the design has been directly translated from our campus education programs. Vaughan et al. (2013) discuss design for blended learning built upon the framework of CoI by Garrison et al. They describe that blended learning is about mixing face-to-face activities with online learning activities, pointing out that “The strength of integrating face-to-face synchronous communication and text-based online asynchronous communication is powerfully complementary for higher educational purposes. The goal of blended learning is to bring these together to academically challenge students in ways not possible through either mode individually”. For me, blended also indicates the integration between face-to-face activities online in real time and activities performed in group or individually beyond a specific time, maybe though constrained to a specific digital tool or online collaboration environment. The balance between synchronous and asynchronous activities, as well as finding tools for collaboration both ways are challenges when thinking about the aspects of access, relationships, vision and function as well as the model of CoI, but still there are great potentials. Vaughan et al. (2013) point out we need to break the barriers of time and space, and argue that “blended learning is specifically directed to enhancing engagement through the innovative adoption of purposeful online learning activities”. They suggest seven principles for designing blended learning in higher ed. which can easily be combined with the above emphasized aspects and characteristics for CoI.

Plan for the creation of open communication and trust.
Plan for critical reflection and discourse.
Establish community and cohesion.
Establish inquiry dynamics (purposeful inquiry).
Sustain respect and responsibility.
Sustain inquiry that moves to resolution.
Ensure assessment is congruent with intended processes and outcomes.

As I am not that fond of stages or principles, I will have to rethink all this information and knowledge and make my own illustration of design for appreciative, blended, collaborative, d…?, engaged, functional learning – it might end up in a whole alphabet for learning-design – who knows?

Still, all these principles, models, implications and advices concluded above need to be taken care of. Educational developers might be on group to adress but teachers, who are the ones meeting the students, become especially important as design isn’t just about course frameworks, goals, structures and assessments but about aspects that need to live during the whole course. Bates (2019) points out that teachers are crucial when designing for online collaborative learning and CoI. He states: “The role of the teacher or instructor in this process is seen as critical, not only in facilitating the process and providing appropriate resources and learner activities that encourage this kind of learning, but also, as a representative of a knowledge community or subject domain, in ensuring that the core concepts, practices, standards and principles of the subject domain are fully integrated into the learning cycle.”.

In the following I will elaborate upon design of blended learning in relation to some of the aspects of Learning Communities (West & Williams, 2018), CoI (Garisson et al., 2000), Five-stage-model (Salmon, 2013) and the principles suggested by Vaughan et al. (2013) above.

Let me start with Access, an aspect that I think are missing in the principles above by Vaughan et al. (2013), still overlapping with Relationships, Engagement with Participants and Social and Emotional Presence as well as with Vision, Function and Engagement with Goals/direction and Content.

Turner (2020) points out that “Entering a classroom on the first day without knowing anyone can be intimidating. Entering a Zoom room in the same context can feel isolating.” (p.2). So, how can I as a teacher facilitate students’ access when it comes to clarity in technology, tasks and course design, as well as a feeling of security and comfortable atmosphere where you like to collaborate and contribute? I have learnt that is important to:

Make sure that students are properly introduced and have the chance to try technology used within the course – i e access to the meeting room and tools for collaborating there.
Nurture the establishment of learners’ relationships with each other and with you as a teacher, and build a sense of community. Create a feeling of inclusion, belonging and security among the students. Being personal but not private as a teacher building social and emotional relationships with the students yourself, as well as helping students to get to know each other is a key factor for access to the group and the interaction within the group (c.f. Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009). In a study about student engagement, conducted by me and a colleague, the result showed that teacher students emphasized participation in terms of feeling safe and secure, and that they found it important to get to know people that they were supposed to interact with (Bergmark & Westman, 2018). Focus the student-teacher relationship supporting students’ social connections by for example “offering warm messages of encouragement and interacting with students through online check-ins, videoconferencing, or telephone calls” (Fanshawe, Burke, Tualaulelei & Cameron, 2020). Brindley et al. (2009) also argue, with reference to Chapman, Ramondt, & Smiley (2005) that “Important elements for establishing successful learning communities are informality, familiarity, honesty, openness, heart, passion, dialogue, rapport, empathy, trust, authenticity, disclosure, humour, and diverse opinions”.
Make sure that students get to know and understand views on learning as well as the values and the meaning of a learning community or CoI in order to better know what is expected. “By clarifying our understanding and expectations about what we hope students will be able to do, learn, and become in a learning community, we can more precisely identify what our ideal learning community would be like and distinguish this ideal from the less effective/efficient communities existing in everyday life and learning” (West & Williams, 2018). Transparency of expectations is also emphasized by Brindley et al. (2009).
Interaction, dialogue and engagement are vital for online learning environments and thus require teachers with skills to facilitate and support access to such activities/milieus (Brindley et al. 2009). So, give access to interactive and collaborative strategies and skills such as community agreements; different structures for conversations, and facilitate learner’s readiness for group work, so that everyone is invited to share and participate, protocol for sharings, sharing responsibility for documentation and so on.
Plan for continuous tutorials, questions times etc. to be able to guide students and help them access different dimensions of collaboration and learning communities.

The list can be so much longer but this is my start, I will continue (more about that in my last blog). I let a picture of a tea bag that I got from my students talk instead. We had just sat down for a seminar and one student that had bought a cup of tea said: Oh Susanne you should have had this tea-bag, it suits you. The student showed it to the one sitting next to her and then they laughed and the other said “It does not only suits you – it defines you!” I was flattered and glad that they had pinpointed my ambition and my values and also seemed to appreciate it.

Finally, as teachers and educational leaders need to be able to see traces or indicators of wanted/expected result, I found the table below from Garrison et al (2000) quite useful as it shows some examples of indicators to guide you when designing or evaluating the design. Brindley et al. stress that assessing has been a common way of demonstrating the value of learning in communities. I think it is important to start use other ways to show the value we ascribe learning communities. If you are interested in more indicators you can find a table/chart as an appendix in Guide for blended learning by Cleveland-Innes & Wilton (2018) that you may find useful. In addition, there are a lot of useful stuff in this book.

Table by Cleveland-Innes & Wilton (2018) in Guide for blended learning available here.

On this link you can find an Erasmus+ project called ABC learning design that provides you with a toolkit and ideas of how to arrange workshops among higher ed. teachers for developing and designing courses collaboratively taking different learning styles in consideration. The main idea is creating “storyboards”.

On this site EDUCAUSE Review, you will find some interesting links to different subjects concerning online learning and collaboration under the headline Transforming Higher Ed., for example about creating emotional engagement, student success in a changing world, pedagogy of care in communities of practices.

Thank you for reading and Good Luck with your design! / Susanne

References:

ABC-learning. Erasmus+ [Homepage] Available at: https://abc-ld.org/

Bates, T. (2019). Online collaborative learning. In Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2^nd edition). (chapter 4) https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Bergmark, U. & Westman, S. (2018). Student participation within teacher education: emphasising democratic values, engagement and learning for a future profession, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2018.1484708

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The international Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3). Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271

Cleveland-Innes, M. (2020). Roles, learning design, and the Community of Inquiry. Presentaton ONL.

Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell, P. (2012). Emotional Presence, Learning, and the Online Learning Environment. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4). Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1234/2347

Cleveland-Innes, M. & Wilton, D. (2018). Guide to blended learning. Coomonwealth of learning. Available at: http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/3095/2018_Cleveland-Innes-Wilton_Guide-to-Blended-Learning.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Fanshawe, Burke, Tualaulelei & Cameron (2020). Creating emotional engagement in online learning. Blog at Transforming Higher Ed. Available at: https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/8/creating-emotional-engagement-in-online-learning

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferenceing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105. Available at: http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Garrison_Anderson_Archer_Critical_Inquiry_model.pdf

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

EDUCAUSE Review. Transforming Higher Ed. [Homepage]. Available at: https://er.educause.edu/columns/transforming-higher-ed

Turner, K. H. (2020) “Building Community in a Virtual Course,” Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: 9(1), 16. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol9/iss1/16

Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press. Available at: Click to access 120229_99Z_Vaughan_et_al_2013-Teaching_in_Blended_Learning_Environments.pdf

From Community of Practices to Learning communities and networks online

In this blog on topic 4 I will give a short view of the history of Community in Practices and then elaborate a bit about the differences between Learning Communities and Personal Learning Networks. Finally, I illuminate some characteristics of a learning community online and reflect upon my PBL groups journey in relation to that.

Community of Practice (CoP)

Lave and Wenger presented the concept of Community of Practice (CoP) already in 1991 (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Wenger has further developed his thoughts about situated learning published in 1998 (Wenger, 1998). Being a scholar in the subject of Education, this is well known theories that has guided my work as a teacher in early childhood, primary school and higher ed. for long. Wenger (2010) describes communities of practice as a social learning system, as main characteristics such as structure, organization, complexity, relationships, and so on can be related to systems in general. From my perspective, the ideas about online learning communities and online learning network/personal learning networks (PLN) thus are old ideas in somewhat new suits. Of course, todays’ context with a higher degree of online learning and that the internet contributes with both access to a lot of knowledge as well as relationships although we are spread all over the world, demand some kind of rethinking. As Anderson (2008) discusses, theories may help us understand parts of the reality or illustrate our visions. “Good theories build upon what is already known, and help us to interpret and plan for the unknown” (Anderson, 2008, introd. ch. 2). Ally (2008) capture some basic perspectives on learning and the implications for online learning, from behaviorism, via cognitivism and constructivism to land in connectivism. For me, this description lacks quite a few nuances of learning, especially since constructivism seems to be an umbrella for a wide range of perspectives. In addition, there are newer perspectives that get invisible. Still, I understand the need to pick a few. It though provokes me a bit that it sometimes appears as the online and digital learning movement have somewhat found the answers to educational issues that educational theorists have for long elaborated upon and that digital tools are the solutions for all challenges in education, although a challenge in itself. Anyhow, back to learning communities.

Learning communities vs personal learning networks

According to Oddone (2019, video 1) there are differences between a learning community and an online learning network. In addition, I believe a community of inquiry may add further dimensions to collaborative groups online which I will further elaborate upon in the blog for topic 4. I think the definition or maybe rather the description of what a learning community might be in short could be a group for collaboration where individuals support each other and make use of each other and different perspectives in the process of exploring a content/topic, constructing knowledge. For me, there are though, a difference between an online learning community and a physical learning community from my perspective as a teacher. A learning community online can connect beyond time and place in their own community online space through different technologies. The challenge here for the teacher is to enable relationships to be built and engagement and activity to flourish (Brindley & Walti, 2009). More about this in when discussing design in the blog of topic 4. In the first video by Oddone (2019), she elaborates upon learning communities and personal learning network (PLN) – our own informal learning network that may arise spontaneously and give personal benefits not necessary in relation to content or profession. She refers to Wenger and how he explains about the difference between social learning communities and learning networks: “Two aspects of the social fabric which have different effects on learning potential” (Wenger et al. 2011, p.10). As Oddone says in video 1, communities “are more tightly knit and may have restrictions and are often created for a particular purpose”. Communities are according to Oddone “developed around a shared interest, passion or goal, may be formal or informal, members wish to advance knowledge about a shared domain, create a sense of identity, and a shared practice”. Networks on the other hand, are described as more openly weaved with although it is the same thread where nodes are created due to the members needs and communication-/collaboration patterns. Networks may be formed by chance or intentional, and have no collective intention or design and as such are without commitments as well. (Oddone, video 1, time 17:39). As such, networks differ from learning communities as memberships in networks may change, in a personal learning network you have your own personal needs and interests in focus and the ties may be both strong and week according to Oddone (video 2). Still, smaller communities can exist alongside a wider network.

When reflecting on my own situation I would honestly say that except for this course I don’t have any PLN online and do not belong to a learning community online. Still, my learning community at work with some of my colleagues sometimes move online due to distances, Covid or other reasons. Of course, I have colleagues from abroad that I meet in projects and so on, but I do not consider them as my learning community, although I might should. I will therefore not elaborate further on that, but try to describe our process in the PBL-group.

Reflection on our PBL-group process in relation to main characteristics of a learning community online

In our PBL-group we started by asynchronously discuss what a learning community is, central characteristics and functions of learning communities from our experiences. We used some new tools for me, Lino and Flipgrid in the process which was a good training for me. To brake our habitual pattern, we decided to try to work with the same main references when investigating the topic, so that we could discuss our experiences in relation to the same papers. In earlier topics we had agreed on some questions to investigate and then asynchronously made our own investigation with the questions as starting points, still inspiring each other in our conversations in google drive, padlet etc. We had a really nice synchronous conversation about the papers we had read: Learning Communities: How Do You Define a Community? (West & Williams, 2018) and Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment (Brindely, Walti & Blaschke, 2009)

We then started to reflect on our own journey as a learning community. We made use of West and Williams (2018) four aspects or defining characteristics of a learning community in our further investigation about how to foster learning communities online. The four characteristics pointed out by West and Williams are; access, relationships, vision and function. In addition, we also combined these aspects with the KWL-model, know, want to know, and learned, in original from Ogle (1986) but emphasized in diverse settings such as for example Academic Success Center

Picture developed by members in my PBL-group.

When everyone had made their own reflection in relation to this illustration and shared those, we realized that we first had been working in a group as individuals with diverse interests and competencies, and after a while we started to work more as a group, not only contributing with our individual work but sharing narratives and creating knowledge together. See our SWAY-presentation for topic 3.

In the blog of topic 4, I will return to my understanding of a learning community, in relation to community of inquiry and how to support and facilitate such collaborative groups online as a teacher in higher ed. when designing and running a course. I will there focus blended learning in terms of synchronous and asynchronous moments.

Thank you for reading.

References:

Academic Success Center, available at

https://asc.tamu.edu/Study-Learning-Handouts-(1)/Reading-Strategies-KWL-Method

Ally, M (2008). Foundations of educational theory for online learning. In The theory and practice of online learning. (chapter 1). Athabasca university press.

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. In The theory and practice of online learning. (chapter 2). Athabasca university press.

Brindely, J E., Walti, E. & Blaschke, L M. (2009). Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 10(3). SSN: 1492-3831. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26627896_Creating_Effective_Collaborative_Learning_Groups_in_an_Online_Environment

Lave, J. & Wenger (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42374-8

Oddone , K. (2019). PLNs Theory and practice part 1, Youtube

Oddone , K. (2019). PLNs Theory and practice part 2, Youtube

Ogle, D. (1986) K-W-L: A Teaching Model That Develops Active Reading of Expository Text. The Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/RT.39.6.11

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practices. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66363-2.

Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179-198). Springer London.

Wenger, E. (2011). Communities of practice: a brief introduction. In STEP Leadership Workshop, University of Oregon, 2011. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/11736

To take part, participate and/or share: reasons and modes of openess in higher ed.

Picture: Gerd Altmann från Pixabay

Considering openess in higher education is tricky. There is so many different ways to go and aspects to consider. Openness may embrace both taking part of open resources, participating in open networks and sharing as an academic and as a learner. But, it is also about our values and how we consider the role of education, learning and knowledge in our society. As I wrote in my blogpost on topic one, my relationship with openness concerning digital educational resources is unclear, distanced and unsecure. I’ve learnt a lot during this topic, both during PBL-group work, investigating and discussing, but also when taking part of other groups sharing, for example I found the interesting paper by Hylén in the sharing of PBL-group 4. During the investigation phase I also found a blog by a researcher (savasavasava-blog, 2015) that woke my interest and in which I found some interesting references. As I couldn’t confirm the name or the quality of that blog I have instead used some of the references and you will meet them in this blogpost where I will try to make my understanding of openness explicit and sort some things out pointed out in the headline. Let’s start with the question Why?

WHY OPENESS?

Different global forces or trends has come to affect higher education in a direction where knowledge and higher education has become a trade on the global market and universities compete about learners (cf. Ball, 2016; Barnett, 2016). Still, more and more universities and academics are going open with their education resources and intellectual property (Hylén, OECD). Hylén points out that sharing OER for univ. could be a way of nurturing your public relations and make the university visible for new students. According to Hylén, there are altruistic arguments such as “sharing knowledge is a good thing to do” (un-numbered pages), a sort of value-ladded reason, closely to Wiley’s (2010) argument that “Openness is the only means of doing education” and also, as Hylén stresses, this is in line with article 26 in the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, that everyone has the right to education and preferably free (at least for fundamental stages). To this type of arguments, we could also add reasons such as the value of sharing in itself, the redefinition of learners role and hierarchy in education as well as equal access (is that possible?) that Raguphati (2020) addresses in the introduction video on this topic. Another argument for sharing OER pointed out by Hylén is the same as for OA (open access), namely to pay back to taxpayers financing publicly funded activities. Increasing quality by collaborating, making use of each-others’ knowledge is yet another reason according to Hylén (OECD). There has also been a movement where scholars go public on social media and blogs sharing not only their intellectual property but their experiences, thoughts and engagement, and by that are taking part in a conversation about educational issues (Stewart, 2015). Stewart discuss this as a way for scholars to increase their reputation and influence, what coincides with what Willinsky (2012) discuss as the “Reputation economy”, where scholars going public by open access as a way of gaining a stronger reputation and higher ranking in the academic world, a sort of extrinsic reason.

HOW GOING OPEN?

So, from the question of why going open to the question of how going open? For the purpose of building a new security when it comes to openness, I started to explore how to find, access, take part of, use and reuse ORs and OERs, and then moved on to issues connected to sharing OER. For both, I needed to get to know the rules and legislations of copyright and creative commons.

Taking part, using and re-using

Concerning taking part of OERs, I found this site on the web of the University of Gothenburg really helpful. I have also learnt about pixabay and found this FAQ helpful.

I used some time trying out different tools/resources such as mindmaster, coogle, padlet, mural, but still need to work on these to be able to use them actively with colleagues and students. I read in Bates’ (2019) chapter about different forms of open educ. and then went in to reading about different MOOCs that interested me at Coursera. I enjoyed watching the short movie by Cormier (2010) one of the founders, explaining a MOOC.

and the tedtalk of one of the founders, Daphne Koller, explaining their view of open education which I also found thanks to PBL group 4.

To be honest, I. was somewhat chocked by the amount of OER that I found, but at the same time I feel less insecure and empowered to actively use some of the resources myself. As this course run, I will also have experience of attending a MOOC, and as Oddone (2016) writes, the course becomes a personal learning environment (PLE), a sort of ecology, in which people, texts, thoughts, websites, OER, applications e t c connect, or using post-humaist concepts, inter- and intra-act and be-comes in ongoing entangled processes. This is thoughts that I like and you recognize it from the blogpost on topic 1 where I wrote about the web as rhizome.

Sharing

Picture by Gerd Altmann från Pixabay

In our PBL-group, The Silicon Allies, we choosed to focus on the flow of producing OER. To see our maze about sharing click here. I will therefore focus on two other aspects of sharing in this post triggered by the webinar on this topic.

First, Ragupathi (2020) gave some recommendations and practical tips on sharing, of which I want to highlight “balance privacy and openness”. She urges us to consider if I am ready to share, who I would like to share with or not and in which community, who I will share as, i e my digital identity, and finally, what specific resources I like to share. This is an issue illuminated by Cronin (2017) as well. She found that balance was a common concern among educators using open educational pedagogy but in a slightly different manner. Educators in her study experienced that interaction in open oline spaces tended to blur the boundaries between the private and professional roles. Reflecting on my own sharing in relation to this, I know that I share resources and intellectual property with colleagues and students enrolled to courses, within communities but not open to everyone. I do it in my role as a senior lecturer and educational leader in order to enhance learning, inspire and hopefully gain access to resources myself. I also reflected a lot about my roles when starting this blog and therefore posed some questions to my university about their view on staff going open in different ways. I have not yet received fully answers to these questions but these will probably help me decide to what degree I will, and can, participate in open online spaces in my role as educator and researcher. I am planning to edit a book and due to this course, I am now aware of the possibility to publish openly (see for example (BC Open Ed) and I will consider that option as well. The thoughts that I meet from others when bringing this up, are often connected to pre-assumptions that open is free and that free is not as good or as high quality as the expensive ones or the books published by “difficult-to-get-approved-by- publishers”.

Secondly, in the same webinar, Creeman (2020) poses the question whether teachers’ work is to produce content and protect it, OR to provide a context for different content, i e teaching in and for a context. I think that is a relevant question as the teacher role transforms when OER becomes a natural part of learners’ way of constructing knowledge. Creeman points out that this means that students turn to a university for learning support, getting involved in processes with others, not primarly for getting access to content. This open for questions of how we can improve our ways of building communities in higher ed. support and enhance students building relationships and fellowship as well as engagement in digital education in successful ways. But also on what ground we build our pedagogy when designing courses. This, my dear reader, is something that I will eloborate further on in my next blogpost. Thoughts to be continued…

References:

Ball, S.J. (2016). Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education., 14(8), 1046–1059. doi:10.1177/1478210316664259

Barnett, R. (2016). Constructing the university: Towards a social philosophy of higher education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(1), 78–88. doi:10.1080/00131857.2016.1183472

Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2^nd edition). https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Cormier, D (2010 December 8). What is a MOOC? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc

Creeman, A (2020). What is open education? Video in ONL-curse. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/openeducation/video/

Cronin, C. (2017). Openness and praxis: Exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning: IRRODL, 18(5), 15-34.

Hylén, J. (not dated). Open educational resources: Opportunities and challenges. OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Paris. http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/37351085.pdf

Koller, D. (2012 August 1) What we’re learning from online education. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FvJ6jMGHU&feature=emb_title

Oddone, K. (2016). PLE or PLN or LMS or OLN? Blog post about the ONL course. https://www.linkinglearning.com.au/ple-or-pln-or-lms-or-oln/

Ragupathi, K. (2020). What is open education? Video in ONL-curse. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/openeducation/video/

savasavasava-blog (2015 June 27) The Falacy of ”Open”

https://savasavasava.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-fallacy-of-open/

Stewart, B. (2015). Open to influence: What counts as academic influence in scholarly networked Twitter participation. Learning, Media, and Technology, 40(3), 1-23. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2015.1015547

Wiley, D. (2010 March 6). Open education and the future. TEDxNYED. YouTube

Willinsky, J. (2012). Open access and academic reputation. In H. Masum & M. Tovey, The reputation society: How online opinions are reshaping the offline world. p.129-138.

Online participation and digital literacies: rhizomatic re-mixing and doubts about it

BLOG Topic 1

What kind of online participation do I engage in and in what way? To what extent can I consider myself as digital literate, if at all? What kind of specific skills and attitudes do these digital activities requires? How can I become more digital literate, and finally, how can I as an educational leader support digital literacy among teachers and students?

These questions were the starting point for me going into topic 1, Online participation and digital literacies, and also part of my PBL-groups investigations. When I read the scenario for topic 1, I was thinking of our students, my colleagues and myself when starting this course, feeling insecure, although I am somewhat literate or at least capable when it comes to digital tools and communities that I usually use and inhabit. Our students are maybe part of what some call “the digital native generation” (see White & Le Cornu, 2011, for a critical stance against this expression) but are still insecure if they need to deal with other digital spaces and tools that the one they are used to. I think it’s like music, sometimes we need others to challenge and inspire us, to expand our horizon and we will find new genres.

So, I started to list my digital activity, sorting it under the four categories consuming, communicating, collaborating and creating found in the introduction of topic 1. I then compiled my own four-field map inspired by David White, considering me being a visitor or a resident in those digital spaces I use. It became obvious that I’m more of a consumer than a creator. Still, I both communicate and collaborate to a high degree, mostly in my professional life. So why? I realise that questions connected to ethics, both formal rules like copyright law, my own university’s guidelines, but also my lack of knowledge about what and how I can re-use, or re-mix and share becomes a limitation. I am afraid doing something wrong or illegal, or maybe offend someone or make a statement that are interpreted wrong and therefore would put me in a bad light. This albeit the fact that I’m a sharer and quite outspoken the IRL word. Anyhow, let us focusing digital literacies and re-mixing as one aspect.

As you probably have seen, Dough Belshaw points out eight essential elements of digital literacies in his ted-talk, what I would call Digital literacies as the eight C’s; cognitive, construction, communication, civic, critical, creative, confident and cultural. He also emphasises the re-mix of different sources.

Pictures from the presentation in the ted-talkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

This re-mix is a main part of being a creator rather than consumer, at least if you don’t produce all your pictures and ideas by yourself. Even if it is okey to re-mix within certain boundaries, my feeling is that this can easily be both offending and unethical. I think ethical and critical awareness is one of the most urgent aspects of digital literacies. In our PBL-presentation we write that critical, ethical and ethnical awareness includes a wide range of issues, from critically evaluate websites and sources, be aware of copyright law, state original sources, to questions about netiquette, responsibilities and respecting others integrity and wellbeing. All of those are connected to society, cultures and values and are as such also changing over time. (cf Aranda, 2007; Cennamo et al, 2010; EDUCAUSEreview/Ortega, 2020; Hawley Turner, 2020; Olcott, Farran, Echenique, & Martinez, 2015).

Talking about the meaning of digital literacies, I want to stress a few frameworks or models that our group came up with after doing some investigation. The first we called Digital literacy as Awareness, Mindset and Ability, and it looks like this in our interpretation:

This illustration is built upon following definition by Martin & Grudziecki (2006) quoted by Elizabeth Marsh here:

“Digital literacy in the workplace is the awareness, mindset and ability of individuals to confidently use digital workplace tools responsibly and effectively in order to solve problems, be productive, support well-being and thrive at work by processing and applying information and data, creating content, connecting and collaborating with other people, and reflecting on and adapting one’s digital practices.”

Further investigation showed that Elizabeth Marsh had developed a framework for Digital skills in workplaces and also a way of assessing these skills. See figure below. She argues that poor digital skills hinder the progress of digital workplaces in organisations. In the folder The Digital Workplace Skills Framework (© Digital Work Research, 2018) she explains some crucial areas of skills as you can see in the figure below, which she also elaborate further on in the framework, resulting in four main skills within each area and how these can be supported in organisations.

In this framework re-mixing is also stressed as a main skill: “Create new resources in a range of formats, either from scratch or by re-mixing existing digital artefacts” (© Digital Work Research, 2018). When assessing my own digital literacy, I realise that re-mixing is crucial for me to develop, as I pointed out above. I need to learn more about openness and sharing, what and how, in order to feel secure enough to dare challenging myself and become a creator in a higher extent.

Why re-mixing? Beside the fact that it is considered a skill in digital literacies, and that our digital world requires some kind of digital literacy, I would also argue that internet and the web can be regarded a rhizome with multiple beginnings and no ends or hierarchical structures. This is a metaphor that can also be used for learning seen from a new-materialist/ post-humanist perspective (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Deleuze & Parnet, 2006 for the concept of rhizome). You can also read a blogpost of Bluemink here about the web as a rhizome here.

Connected to the web we inter-act with other people synchronously or asynchronously, as well as we intra-act with matters and materiality. Matters can be considered as active agents, may it be computers, sites, words, pictures or thoughts and so on (see Barad, 2007 for the concepts of active agents and intra-actions). In that way we are always involved in ongoing processes of becoming where we, the matters and materiality are mutually affecting and affected by each other. As such, I am already involved in re-mixing, creating, re-creating and becoming, by following threads, interpreting information and re-thinking myself and my knowledge and actions. Deleuze and Guattari stress collaborative writing and decentralised knowledge as part of a rhizomatic learning, and I have myself enjoyed being in such processes in my research, collaborating and writing papers digitally. You can read one here, Philosophical reimaginings of educational places and policy: Through the metaphor of a wardrobe (Alerby, Arndt & Westman, 2019), where we provoke and challenge common ways of thinking about education by adressing the complexities of shifting, expanding, constantly evolving educational spaces and places where digital learning environments are one.

How and what can be remixed? Although I’m involved in ongoing processes of becoming and re-mixing, I don’t openly share all my re-mixed creations due to the heavy burden of responsibility and my fear of messing up, and even worse, that my digital fot-steps forever would show these mistakes. Such a coincidence that Creative Commons are part of the next topic – lucky me! Still, I think it is really important to consider what Oxley (2010) points out: “Freedom of Speech does not equate to freedom of consequences…” (p. 3).

To be continued…Thank you for reading!

References:

Alerby, E., Arndt, S., & Westman, S. (2019). Philosophical reimaginings of educational places and policy: Through the metaphor of a wardrobe. Policy Futures in Education, 17(4), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1478210317739489

Aranda J.F., (2007). Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, 21(4), 11-14.

Belshaw, Dough (2012). The essential elements of digital literacies: Doug Belshaw at TEDxWarwick, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78

Cennamo, K.S., Ertmer, P.A., and Ross, J.D. (2010). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach, 1st ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Digital Work Research, March, Elisabeth, 2018 Link: https://digitalworkresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/The-Digital-Workplace-Skills-Framework-final.pdf

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/poor-digital-skills-hinder-digital-workplace-progress/

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Trans.). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2006). Dialogues II. London: Continuum.

Bluemink blog. Available at: https://bluelabyrinths.com/2015/07/15/the-web-as-rhizome-in-deleuze-and-guattari/

EDUCAUSE Review 55, no 2 (2020). Available at: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/5/digital-ethics-in-higher-education-2020

Turner, K H (2020) “Building Community in a Virtual Course,” Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 16.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol9/iss1/16

Martin & Grudziecki (2006) cited at https://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/4-key-elements-of-an-impactful-workplace-digital-literacy-program/

Olcott Jr. D., Carrera Farran, X., Gallardo Echenique, E. E., & González Martínez, J. (2015). Ethics and Education in the Digital Age: Global Perspectives and Strategies for Local Transformation in Catalonia. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal, 12(2). pp. 59-72. doi http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v12i2.2455

Oxley, C. (2010). Digital citizenship: Developing an ethical and responsible online culture. ACCESS, 25 (3), 5-9.

White, D. (2014). Visitors and residents.

White, D., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: a new typology for online engagement, Fi®st moñd@y, Peer-reviewed journal on the internet. Available at: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

Connected

We are connected. We have had our first webinar and also meetings with the PBL-group.

To get started required some effort in order to orientate on the course web-site, set the blog and get a grip on what the PBL-group should do and who we are. But now it feels like I’ve started and things has become a little bit clearer.

Besides the presentations on the ONL 202 community space we have made a common presentation in our group to present us. It seems like we in The Silicon Allies, our PBL-group number 14, have somewhat the same ambition to engage, to encourage and challenge each other in our learning. As well, it is somewhat encouraging that many of us share the feeling of being out in unknown spaces, a little bit insecure. By the way, our name are inspired by the fact that number 14 is the number of silicon in the chart of the chemical elements by atomic numbers. Silicon is stretchable, flexible and versatile as we believe our learning process and brains will be.

I had some good time going through the other PBL-groups presentations, and met childhood dreams as well as animal personalities and also made a journey to places far away from where I live up in the very north of Sweden. It is nice to meet so many people with the ambition to improve our digital knowledge in order to be able to enhance digital literacies among our students or colleagues.

When preparing for the course start I read some papers about PBL (problem based learning). As education is my subject I am already involved in re-thinking our concepts of teaching and learning, both in my practice as a senior lecturer, as an educational leader in teacher education and in my research. You will find some of my papers that connect to higher education in my different blogposts I believe. Bellow you will find one.

Anyhow, I found it very interesting to read about the different constellations of PBL that have developed through the years as the approach have been present in education since the 1980s according to Savin-Baden (2014). On this link you will find this article among others on the subject. I met PBL briefly in my own teacher education some years later, but as it has gained both praise and blame, especially blame when it comes to more rational educational and political agendas and the New Public Management-wave that has kidnapped the educational field in my opinion, the PBL approach have somewhat faded out in Swedish compulsory schools and maybe also in higher ed. I believe that theoretical frameworks that regard learning as a linear and predictable process may have contributed to this (for further discussion see Westman & Bergmark, 2018).

Actually, this morning, I found a debate article in the daily news about the importance of not letting students own questions guide their learning. I think that is a pity. In early childhood education for example, children’s own questions and practice theories are crucial for motivation and engagement. Kek and Huijser (2015) discuss the importance of empowering students and also us as teachers, and they point out that PBL can help us with that. They argue that PBL could be a way of “taking charge of the [evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary] changes, and more specifically problembased learning (PBL) as an adaptive educational approach” (p.407). They discuss learning and knowledge as something in constant change, and although don’t mention Bauman, the use of the concept liquid signals, at least in my world, that they are inspired by his post-modern theory about the liquid modernity/society. Still, they point out this to be the challenge with such approaches as postmodern theories and social constructionist perspectives sometimes are criticised for being relative, letting anything go, due to the fact they reject a single truth (for further reading see Bauman, 2000; Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1967; Burr, 2015; Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2015; Gergen, 1985).

When I consider our teacher education programs in relation to the constellations Savin-Baden emphasizes, I would say that we mostly engage in PBL constellations that focus active learning, practice skills, critical understanding. This albeit we often don’t call it PBL, but rather projects or thematic groupwork and so on. In my research- and development projects with teachers, principals and management teams, I find us working mostly in constellations focusing collaboration and transformation, as we work with participatory action research.

So then, what can count as PBL? What are the significants and who decide? I will elaborate on these questions as the course runs and my reading and collaboration has increased. In addition, we are know starting Topic 1, Online participation and digital literacies (DL). I am looking forward to dig into this area, both when it comes to some kind of standards, concrete tools and strategies of how to support DL but also for exploring theoretical frameworks and (ontologies)epistemologies that constitutes the base for digital learning.

To be continued…