It has been an interesting course on many levels. Primarily I think the course is interesting because it puts the finger on the most important thing in modern education today, changing paradigm. As I have been writing about in earlier posts, I have some experience about the problem of today’s education (also some experience about how it can be developed and improved) and even if this paradigm shift has been going on for a while it is more relevant than ever because of the increased focus on online education today. Looking at the problem, I think that Ken Robinson (2010) summarize it quite well in his talk about changing paradigm for education when he speaks about the difference between traditional education and what it should be: engaging and motivating people to learn. As Ken Robinson describes it the problem originates from economic and cultural drivers. We would like to educate students according to an effective process but also keep our cultural values in mind. For us at LTU this has made us move towards distance education but at the same time we have realized that our cultural values and pedagogy is difficult to sustain, and for many situations we don’t know why.
This course has been helpful in straightening out question marks and also pointing to solutions, both on a theoretical and practical level. I have gained a lot of experience in social learning and online learning, and much of this is thanks to the course process, i.e. start from a scenario that everyone can relate to; discuss in each PBL group to get inspiration, further understanding and everybody’s perspective; search and explore additional information; connect to a collective deliverable; and finally, the individual learning, or take way, is captured in a blog reflection. This process is, for me, a good way of performing social learning, where for example everyone can understand the starting point and there is a crucial mix of individual and team work. It also fits with fell with other models such as Maher et.al.s (2011) framework for collective design where there is a need for motivation to communicate and change a common representation.
By participating in this course I have gained an understanding of both sides, academia and the learner. In my academic role it is nevertheless a simple task to create change since there is not one solution that fits everything. I believe it is a good approach to start by looking at a specific course and try to understand what is the essential learning that you would like to achieve and then try to incorporate methods, tools and concepts that I have learnt in this course, to gain a first understanding on what the result are. For our situation at LTU, I believe that we need to focus on the course design and the digital tools that could support us, but also the technical infrastructure such as mics and cameras in physical classrooms. Thanks for a really nice course!
References:
Robinson, K., (2010). Changing Education Paradigms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Maher, M. L., Paulini, M., & Murty, P. (2011). Scaling up: From individual design to collaborative design to collective design. In Design Computing and Cognition’10 (pp. 581-599). Springer, Dordrecht.
