In EDUCAUSE Horizon Report 2019 “Higher Education Edition at a Glance” I saw this chart over key trends accelerating Higher Education technology adoption:

They write “Institutions of higher education are rethinking how to meet the academic and social needs of all students seeking credentials or degrees. This shift to student-centered learning requires faculty and academic advisors alike to act as guides and facilitators. Approaches to new degree programs, including the rise in new forms of interdisciplinary studies, indicate that institutions are seeking to provide students with experiences that connect disciplines while rethinking how to capitalize on existing resources” (p7) and “A blockchain-based transcript could include information about courses and degrees, certifications, badges and other microcredentials, co-curricular activities, internships and employment, and other competencies and credentials. Such a record could follow students from one institution to another, serving as verifiable evidence of learning and enabling simpler transfer of credits across institutions” (p29) [link]

Reflection on module 5:

5.1 What are the most important things that you have learnt through your engagement in this course? Why?

-I’m still interested how agency and self-evaluation can be combined with shared responsibility and P2P-review. This is to me a good way for training skills in metacognition and using design thinking to improve the results due to new iterations and empathize with and authentic audience.

5.2 How will your learning influence your practice?

-The “NMC Horizon Report 2017 Higher Education Edition” mention the Domain of One’s Own project that enable faculty, staff, and students
to register their own domain name and freely associate it with a hosted university webspace. This is called next-generation digital learning environments (NGDLE) and my own practice is to use DS106 Assignment Bank.

5.3 What are your thoughts about using technology to enhance learning/teaching in your own context?

-The idea is that the “Mother blog” harvest the feed from the course participants with hash-tags. They then get categorized as assignments or tutorial that become a resource to other participants. The next level is explored by eduFeedr, where you can associate the assignments to a progress in a course.

5.4 What are you going to do as a result of your involvement in ONL? Why?

-I have managed to recreate the community feeling of P2PU in Canvas Network, where the other participants use a rubric to evaluate other members. Since the reward of an Open Badge is transparent, the rest of the community can question the quality of the evaluation.

5.5 What suggestions do you have (activities and/or in general) for development of eLearning in your own teaching or context?

-I like the idea in The state of digital education , where institutions providing the qualification are held responsible for all work done by staff, volunteers and subcontractors, wherever in the world they are. This bridge for a new accreditation system, where the how in learning is more open.

References to Learning Resources:

NMC Horizon Report 2017 Higher Education Edition

The state of digital education (Malta EU 2017). Report from European Commission conference

Supporting student learning by scaffolding and facilitation is a key area in the provision of a ‘quality’ educational experience in formal settings.
Successful student support has a marked and positive impact on retention, progression, completion rates and overall student satisfaction – this can be even more so for students studying online. Blended learning can become unmanageable if the design build on activities and responsibilities, with no time to reflect on meaning and engage in discourse for shared understanding. The concept ‘Community of Inquiry’ (CoI) argue that an learning experience is both a collaborative and an individually cognitive processing known and stimulate higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). The Chickering and Gamson principles has in “Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry” (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013) been adapted to ubiquitous connectivity afforded students as follows:

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

When learning online the “Five Stage Model” by Gilly Salman (2013) describe e-moderating and technical support as participants building expertise. She wrote “Given technical support, good human intervention from an e-moderator, and appropriate e-tivities to promote action and interaction, nearly all participants will progress through these stages of use of asynchronous networking opportunities” (s.12)

Reflection on module 4:

4.1 Reflect on your current practice and reason about possibilities for development of online and blended learning designs.

-I have often taken the approach of Distributed Cognition (Hutchins) and Connectivist MOOC (Downes). This line of thought also investigate the concept of rhizomatic knowledge and community as curriculum (Cormier). This involves four principles:

1. Diversity: In learning we encourage students to engage in diverse readings, diverse environments and diverse discussions
2. Autonomy: The students chart their own course, select their own software and pursue their own learning
3. Interaction / Connectedness: Knowledge emerges as a result of the connections among the students and educators – and is not limited to transfer from experts to recipients
4. Openness: There is no barriers between ‘in’ and ‘out’ – students can accommodate the full engaged, the partially engaged, and the rest – creating strong ties and weak ties (i.e. Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill)

4.2 Reflect on how you can provide better support and scaffolding to students in online and blended learning environments.

-I’m interested in ‘nugeing’ and micro/nano learning to support students. One emerging trend is to use Bots and AI as scaffolding in an online-environment

4.3 Are there opportunities for further development in this area, that you have identified as a result of your own experiences as a learner in this course and of your engagement in this module?

-I want to look at how the culture of sharing is supported in education and P2P-review. I also like to develop skills among students from pattern-recognition and believe this can be done by discerning salient properties from real-world scenarios or examples.

References to Learning resources:

Salmon, G. (2013). E-tivities: The key to active online learning. Routledge (online)
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press.

Further Reading:
John Biggs – Constructive Alignment [Homepage] (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Constructive Alignment – Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness (2013, August 29).  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Conole, G. (2015). The 7Cs of Learning Design.
ADDIE Model Instructional Strategies, (YouTube, 2011) (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
eLearning Implementation Toolkit Infographic based on ADDIE (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. [Homepage] (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Bates, T. (2016). The 10 Fundamentals of Teaching Online for Faculty and Instructors. Consider Guide 4 and 9 in particular for this topic.
Lister, M (2014)  Trends in the Design of E-Learning and Online Learning. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Vol. 10, No. 4, 671-680.
Morrison, D (2015)  Online Learning Insights, Resources for Course Designers [Homepage] (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Tribal groups interactions between people are built on strong connections, while communities of practice have weak structures and limited hierarchies. We often associate strong ties with closeness and higher levels of intimacy as well as frequency of interaction. Organization associated with weak ties allow flexibility and diversity to become social capital. The transactional distance, between the creator of the course and the learner who is using it, can be reduced if you create live session or initiate asynchronous discussions around the video tutorial (Dron & Anderson, 2014)

I first got in contact with Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) “CSCL locates learning in meaning negotiation carried out in the social world rather than in individuals’ heads” (Stahl, Koshmann & Suthers, 2006, p. 416). I now find it very interesting to find out more about the difference between ‘Didatic Pedagogy’ and ‘Reflexive Pedagogy’ since this brings together individual metacognition as a process in collaborative intelligence and peer-to-peer learning:

(Cope & Kalantzis, 2017, p14)

Reflection on module 3:

3a) An occasion when real collaborative learning took place, that moved your own thinking forward

I love the concept of MOOC and I have been inspired by the Open Networked Learning (ONL) that brought in PBL-groups where the participants got agency and took shared responsibility.

3b) Your own Personal Learning Networks – how have they developed and how they could be taken further

I’ve been working on a Collaborative Open Online Course (=COOL course) for my upper-secondary students. It was missing the ownership and sharing between participants.

3c) Reflect on how you can use technologies to enable your own networks for learning processes

My “Moonshot project” is to create STEAM-resources in a repository for in-service teachers linked to “Edcamp Sweden”. I tried DS106 Assignment Bank. on my site Enriched Science Projects.

Definition: A moonshot, in a technology context, is an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of potential risks and benefits. (link (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.)

References to Learning Resources:

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2017). e-Learning ecologies: Principles for new learning and assessment. Taylor & Francis.

Dron, J. & Anderson, T. (2014). Teaching crowds: Learning and social media. Athabasca University Press.

Stahl, G., Koschmann, T. D., & Suthers, D. D. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning. na.

Further reading:

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)

Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences? The International review of research in open and distance learning, 13(2), 26-44.

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.

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. In The theory and practice of online learning (pp. 343-395). Athabasca university press.

Openness in education and learning is facilitated through open educational resources (OERs) and and open participation in courses. I believe we are also ready for open assessment. Open education is no longer limited by physical and geographical constraints (i.e. ubiquitous) and allow the implementation of methods for informal assessment (i.e. Mozilla Open Badges). This has been suggested as a solution to the problem of costly higher education (Weller & Anderson, 2013). There was also observed a new form of participation of people temporarily ‘sampling’ the course (i.e. ‘drop-outs’) or actively observing (i.e. ‘lurkers’) in open learning environments (Mackness, Waite, Roberts & Lovegrove, 2013).

Reflections on module 2:

2a) What openness means for your own practice

In education OER:s on Youtube has made it possible to create adaptation to students entry-level. I had advanced students listening to professors explaining ‘chemical shift’ in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, while other students still were working on basic examples and tutorials. I have also shared and used material in repositories like ‘Microsoft Educator Community‘ or ‘Google for Education
Transformation Center‘.

2b) How to find and use openly licensed resources

I started to used WikiEducator and Wikiskola for OER, but are now experimenting with H5P and DS106bank to create an ecology for sharing. I usually recommend Creative Commons search tool called CC-Search.

2c) Advantages and disadvantages of open and closed technologies

My experience of closed technologies involve ‘silos’ and ‘gatekeepers’ that stop open participation. I found this quote from John Kotter “The existence of silos and gatekeepers is not inherently bad: they are a necessary check on how work is delegated, managed, and completed” and this brings my thoughts to institutions and how the economy is structured. He also offers an definition and connect this to ‘gatekeepers’:
“Silos are robust vertical structures that establish and enforce a rigid hierarchy while discouraging or outright banning horizontal structures. They may also be referred to as “stovepipes,” which is an especially appropriate metaphor because the fire burns only at the bottom level, and the smoke only rises up, never down. Silos require gatekeepers who will enforce that only selected ideas make it to higher levels of the public service” (Kotter International, 2011)

This highlights a problem with conformity or sameness when you have a closed environment. Power balance is also a problem when you have hierarchies “The term ‘gate-keeping’ is thus a telling one when applied to the public service: it implies the existence of a gate, or barrier, and the establishment of a person to actively manage that gate to protect or maintain the structures and organizational values and work flows of the institutional community. Examples include a “union versus management” mentality; managers micro-managing and acting like “dictators;” and various “forms of wheeling and dealing” (Morgan, 2006).

2d) Implications of different open course and MOOC formats in relation to your learning experience on this course.

I’ve experienced eXtended Massive Open Online Courses (x-MOOC) with over 10000 participants, where the lecture is delivered by an instructor to the student. In a connectivist Massive Open Online Course (c-MOOC), groups of people learning together. For younger students I found it usefull to create a task-based Massive Open Online Course (t-MOOC), where the aim is to share knowledge and resources with peer students.

References to Learning Resources:

Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 16(1).

Mackness, J., Waite, M., Roberts, G., & Lovegrove, E. (2013). Learning in a small, task–oriented, connectivist MOOC: Pedagogical issues and implications for higher education. The international review of research in open and distributed learning, 14(4).

Further reading:

Kotter International. Breaking Down Silos. Forbes, Retrieved June 2014 from <http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2011/05/03/breaking-down-silos/>

Morgan, Gareth.  Images of Organization. (London: SAGE Publications, 2006)

Videos:

Creative Commons guide – Overview to CC-licensing by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand

Open education and the future – Short TED-talk by David Wiley

What is a MOOC? – Short explanation by Dave Cormier, one of the people behind the first ever MOOC 

Further readings:

Weller, M. (2014). Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press. (Focus on Chapter 4, Open Educational Resources, and Chapter 5, MOOCs.)

Bates, T. (2015). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Focus on Chapter 10, Trends in open education.)

Dos Santos, A., Punie, Y., Munoz, J. (2016). Opening up education. A support framework for higher education institutions. European Commission JRC Science for Policy Report.