Topic 1. Reading the Scenario

“I have just signed up to do an online course and I am excited to be there. But I have little experience of online courses and it feels really challenging to get started to connect and find my way with all these new sites and tools. I guess that other participants will be more experienced than me and I feel stupid asking about things. We are asked to create a Learning blog on the web; it feels a bit scary to do this. I do share things on Facebook with friends, but here in the open? I want to keep my private life separate from my professional life. But on the other hand, my students seem to share and discuss in social media and use all kinds of tools and resources. I think I need some guidance in how to become more digitally literate and what competencies I need to develop to keep up with what is expected of me” - ONL website

 Introduction

So we have finally gotten a scenario. In this blog post I will react on what I read and try to put two different types of perspective on that, that of me as a student and that of me as a teacher.

 “I have just signed up to do an online course and I am excited to be there. "

Student perspective: I guess this is the way most students feel, they have enrolled in a new course, they enrolled since they have an interest or a desire to get something out of the course. Me as a student of this course is excited since I have the motives to learn new tools, meet new people, and to get new perspectives.

Teacher perspective: It is good that the student is excited. I want to keep the students excitement over the entire course. But their excitement is caused by their motives for taking the course. By understanding those motives and see if they are the same as the course goals. There might be a gap between what the student thinks and what is given.

"But I have little experience of online courses and it feels really challenging to get started to connect and find my way with all these new sites and tools."

Student Perspective: I have taken a few MOOC's and also online courses so I'm not that challenged by the technologies, sites and tools themselves. For me it is more a matter of trying to understand how these tools are used in this particular course and when to switch. The communication strategy is missing.

Teacher Perspective: As a teacher I need to be super-clear with the communication regarding the basics. What to read, What to do, and How to do it. I also need to understand that there takes time and effort by the student to process the information I give them. Don't give to many things at the same time, one document, organized. Give them time to master that and then give another.

"I guess that other participants will be more experienced than me and I feel stupid asking about things."

Student Perspective: I know that my students sometimes feel this way and some classes are better than others at this, I don't know why. Some students are worried that them asking questions are going to affect their grade, not sure why?

Teacher Perspective: As a teacher I want questions, I want discussion, I want student answering each-others questions, I want to be challenged and I want to get feedback. To provide such an atmosphere the openness is not helpful (for some). I make sure to answer all question and give credit (I say thank you) for asking and answering questions. I try to encourage debate and critique, and hope that students will understand the importance of it, and also how to do it. They need to learn how to criticize and ask questions!

"We are asked to create a Learning blog on the web; it feels a bit scary to do this

Student Perspective: This is not my first blog so I don't understand the problem. The students may be semi anonymous and just create a persona? Technical side, register, advertise in plus etc...

Teacher Perspective: I have learned that other learners of this course felt this was a big step, would be interesting to hear their side of this.

"I do share things on Facebook with friends, but here in the open? I want to keep my private life separate from my professional life"

This was one of the things I liked about Dave Whites videos, the scale between the personal life and the institutional! I myself have experienced this and uses a lot of mixed accounts.

Students of Facebook makes me not want to share personal things. But when they leave academia its an asset.

Students on Skype makes me not want to open Skype at home, since a student once was sort of undressed in her image.

I put a lot of my lectures on my YouTube account and I don't see much of a problem with it. I have started to put videos on a university account instead.

But on the other hand, my students seem to share and discuss in social media and use all kinds of tools and resources. 

Teacher: I think we have to provide the students with good tools and maybe we have to go to where the students are. In our case we moved to Slack since the students use it and many programmers.

I think I need some guidance in how to become more digitally literate and what competencies I need to develop to keep up with what is expected of me”

I agree, I think we should not just give the students a new tool expect them to excel in it, we must also give them a way of working within the tool!

Taking the Introduction Webinar, notes

Introduction

Starting the webinar at https://connect.sunet.se/onl/. We started the webinar with some soundchecks and questions to make sure people knew how to use the chat.

Nice to see so many participants.

Unfortunately I lost sound in the beginning of Lars talk and had to restart. I got back in time for the questions session... I hope they recorded properly...
 Quite good presence 41 participants + 7 presenters and seven hosts. There seem to be a lot others that also have sound issues. But with 80 participants that is only 50%!

We also wrote lists on what we expect to gain and what we thought was going to be the challenges we face. I wrote that I look forward to make new friends and that I look forward to gaining the student perspective, both things were mentioned by the hosts, nice!

Connect really is not a good platform anymore, its based on old technology and I have used it far too long.

Good things about Adobe Connect

• Low latency on sound
• Many can participate
• Multiple chats
• Polls
• Divide participants into separate rooms
• Nice to see webcams
• It feels like a classroom!

Bad things about Adobe Connect

• Sound needs to be setup for everyone
• Does not work the same on all platform 
• Lots of students drop out due to techical issues
• Recordings are not in mp4
• Generally very messy to setup sound

Its going to sound like I complain a lot on my blog but I try to capture the student perspective and see what problems there are that creates obstacles for the students.

Unfortunately the webinar did not give that much to me. It was mostly a QnA session I missed the presentation and I guess I have to watch the recording instead. I think the most giving was a cite from Lars:

"The course was the course" - Lars Uhlin

Reading Topic 1, notes

Introduction

Topic one was finally introduced today and its time to take action and to prepare for it. The course web site has four new blog posts on the subject. These are my notes from reading them.

Introductions, aims and resources

First out is the Introductions aims and resources: https://opennetworkedlearning.wordpress.com/topics-and-activities/topic1/topic-1-introduction-aims-resources/

Some notes on reading it, its a bit wordy and unclear at best.

"An essential part is to connect with peers and facilitators, begin to build relationships and to form groups. "

This I guess is a reference to the google community. At least that is boiling with activity right now. I spent some time reading others blogs and giving welcome messages and handed out a +1 to every one I could see. But the cite sounds like we should form groups ourselves of that I'm not sure I thought we would be divided into groups. +Lotta Åbjörnsson wrote "You will get a mail from +Lars Uhlin tomorrow telling you what group you're in and what to do next!" So I guess that is going to happen, just wait an see. Some seems to already know what groups they are in, and the co-facilitators seems to start sharing to some that they belong to a group... confusing at best... and makes me feel a bit left out. Mental note: release vital information to everyone at the same time.

"You will be encouraged to start creating your own online learning space for sharing of reflections on your learning. "

I guess this means the blog I'm writing. Its a learning space. Hm spaces and places now again.

"As a starting point you will reflect on and discuss your own digital presence and identity and your experiences, concerns and challenges."

I guess this is the first blog task. I do hope there will come more instructions!

Reading and resources.

There are two short videos and an article, there seem to be another article not yet published on PBL. This means I will have to go back, hm how to remember.

Watching: David White: Visitors and Residents (part 1)

He start by rambling about digital natives and immigrants. I guess this a competing theory to his own? I totally don't agree that the younger generation are born into the digital skills. They are consumers but have little understanding. Sure they can handle an interface, but that is not understanding. Fortunately David comes to the conclusion that that model did not hold.

David goes on and exemplifies a couple of learning literacies:

"...critically evaluating a range of digital resources" and "...formulate and express cogent arguments online."

David proposes (his?) model of "our relationship with the web" showing a continuum of "modes of engagement" from the visitors who uses the platform as a tool to solve a task and don't leave social traces, like paying bills - to the residents ( oh no! the spaces and places again! ) who go online "to be present with other people". He then lists different types of social activities like posting on Facebook.

I always wonder what kind of explaining power or predictive such model as the visitor/resident has? I hope he will reveal it soon! 

The model as proposed

David expands the model by adding a vertical axis of personal and institutional, they are not opposing forces but again a continuum. Then right at the end he states a lot about resident forms of practice and how it can affect the institutional work. Resident forms of practice (mode of engagement) give new ways to engage students and staff. They can affect how we assess credibility, how we produce and consume knowledge etc.

Watching: Visitors and Residents: Credibility (part 2)

The video start with a comment on the price of creating content now and before. 

The question is is some knowledge less worth if its online than if it was published with peer review?

Now he start telling of currencies... The traditional credibility currency given by institutions and the second popularity currency of likes and search result fit.

Students often chooses convenience over "accuracy, authority and legitimacy". Wikipedia is used as an example of a learning black market where students go to actually learn and then they need to pretend they got the information from more accredited sources.

Developing digital literacies (2014) JISC guide.

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/developing-digital-literacies

"Digital literacies are those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society."

"digital literacies are essentially a set of academic and professional situated practices supported by diverse and changing technologies."

The seven elements of DL, according to image:

• Media literacy - critically read and produce academic communications
• Communication and collaborations - participate in networks for learning and research
• Digital reputation and online Identity management
• ICT literacy Use digital devices, apps, and services  
• Learning skills in formal an informal technology rich environments.
• Digital scholarship - academic, professional and research practices that depend on digital systems
• Information literacy -  Find interpret, evaluate, manage, and share information.

Then there was something about the Beetham and Sharpe’s framework (2010), probably going to read up on that, since the info on the page was not understandable... "a development process from access and functional skills to higher level capabilities and identity." . 

- Ok, not sure what this is... not sure if the first page or the entire guide. not sure If it is at all interesting... Oh I guess I need a break from this... learning continues another day...

I ended up filling in the activity tracker...

Starting the course

This fall I'm taking the Open Networked Learning Course at Linnaeus University. The course uses methods for open networked learning and is also given as an open online course available for anyone here.

The course description can be found here (in Swedish) and states that the course aims to give the participants an opportunity to explore open online-learning and use digital-tools for teaching and learning. 

There are two main goals that we who takes the course should achieve:

• first we should be able to explain different aspects of e-learning such as digital competence, cooperation, open and online-learning.
• second we should critically reflect on questions regarding e-learning and something that I do not get... in Swedish: "kritiskt reflektera över frågor som rör e­lärande i samband med äger praktikinställningar.."  does not make sense too me, google translated? Lets ask Alastair when I meet him.

I searched for definitions for the concepts in the first goal and found the following:

• Digital Competence "...skills and understanding people should have in the knowledge society" - What is digital competence? by Liisa Ilomäki, Anna Kantosalo and Minna Lakkala
  (Sounds like programming, math, and science to me... :)  )
• Open learning "activities that either enhance learning opportunities within formal education systems or broaden learning opportunities beyond formal education systems." - Wikipedia Open learning
  To be true the openness was more due to "...the development and use of open educational resources." and there seems not to be any consensus definition. But I like almost everything open, open source for instance... and most material in the courses I give are openly available. Do we give a certificate to anyone in the ONL-course? Where does the money come from?
• Online Learning "Online learning is a way of studying for an internationally recognised qualification without needing to attend classes on campus." -The University of Edinburgh 
  Seems simple enough!

The course is given over ten weeks and the first meeting will be on Monday. Apparently It will be just me and Alastair Creelman. The following meetings will consist of Problem Based Learning(PBL) work in groups with a topic per week and a given scenario. According to Wikipedia PBL gives the learner not just knowledge about the domain but skills to solve problems, collaborate and also improves intrinsic motivation, Sounds exciting! 

To get the course certificate I need to actively participate in the PBL groups, present findings, write reflective blog posts (400 words) with references to course literature, a summary blog post, but also to give feedback to other course participants!

My main concerns right now is to get my schedule synced with the other course that I take and the courses I give.