When I decide to read this course my brain started to think about how I could implement Networked Learning in my classes. Today most of my classes are taught at campus and I focus a lot on the active learning activities with students, as an example see Törlind (2019).
In one of my course that I run at the moment (Creative Concept Development) I have a small quiz after each lecture, where the quiz acts as a recap and reflection of each lecture. The quiz can be something like:
- Reading a scientific article reflection on it.
- Reflection on a video.
- Find out information about something on the web.
- Individually reflect on an open-ended question from a topic presented in the lecture
- Individually perform an exercise similar to the one done at the lecture.
Since I have implemented it as a Quiz in our LMS (in our case Canvas), it is only the teaching team that could see the students work and their reflections. So this year (inspired by the ONL course) I thought about how I could improve this. Previously I have often used social media to encourage discussion and reflection in distributed teams or in distance courses. So instead of a Quiz, I introduced a discussion instead.
The discussion assignment. |
The assignment also included that they should respond to another student.
Examples of the discussion. |
Lessons learnt
I think that this was so much better than the quiz last year (it was a reflection on one of the rough prototypes that were made during the lecture). However next time I think that the teaching team should be more active and comment on the discussions.
So this experience shows that it can be very easy to implement pedagogical ideas from networked learning in local courses.