I’ve always thought of myself as open to changes, a quick learner and as rather familiar with various IT tools. But well, as with many other things, Covid proved me wrong…so there i was, in a Zoom online lecture, extremely stressed because, in spite of me testing multiple times my setup and internet connection, the students complained that they couldn’t hear me well enough. And i had no idea why, and what to do. Eventually, i had to stop the live lecture, and to record it on my own – which meant, eventually, much more time spent as compared to a normal, in-class, lecture. Since the IT support couldn’t really explain why this happened, I decided to record all lectures (yes, we had that option), instead of taking the risk of it happening again during a live lecture. Of course, students complained and I can’t really blame them. I hated Zoom and the fact that we cannot have phisical lectures.

Hence, not surprisingly, i was quite negative towards online teaching when i started ONL. One of my expectations with the course was that I will be able to see the brighter side of online education – and that expectation was definetely fullfilled:). It was great to listen to so many enthusiastic teachers with online course experience (pre – Covid) – it definetely gave me new perspectives.

However, i think most of us agreed that some course activities (or topics) just don’t work online – so , when we started topic 4 – blended learning – i thought: this is it! This seems to be how we will want to design courses in the future, in a manner that takes (and integrates) the positive parts with both online and in-class learning.

One aspect that will always be particularly relevant for course design is student retention, and for this reason i chose to focus on Weller et al (2018) and reflect on how I could use their ICEBERG model to improve my own course.

In (very) short, the course i have in mind is a bachelor-level finance course (in-class before Covid) focused so far on assignments and exercises based on the course material. While the topics are very connected to corporations and financial markets (so they could be very practical and reality-oriented), the fact that solving exercises is the focus of the course limits the potential of this course, and definetely affects negatively students’ motivation. The course curriculum changed very little over more than 10 years, and that is because no one seems to be willing to spend their time on making it more interesting / connected to the real world. Covid meant another blow for the course, since explaining exercises over Zoom, while assuming everyone watched the recorded online lectures, was – more or less – a disaster.

Therefore, here’s how I would re-think our finance course from a blended learning perspective, by using the ICEBERG model.

1.INTEGRATION: There is a reluctance to change the course content and learning outcomes, especially because that would involve a change of the course curriculum – which apparently is very time consuming and requires a lot of administrative work. But at this point (especially post-Corona), the curriculum is no longer integrated with the course content. For example, there is no clear list with all the required course material, which sometimes is simply uploaded by teachers online, without further explanation. At the same time, there is no updated / complete list with al the external sources / databases which could be useful for the course, so the students have to spend a lot of time figuring that by themselves.

2. COLLABORATIVE. At the moment, the only collaborative part of the course are the three team assignments, which became particularly problematic after the switch to the online environment (e.g. students sending e-mails or posting on the course forum that they are looking for teammates for the assignment, but without getting any replies). We need to design a better system for building teams (perhaps doing it by ourselves, based on, for instance, a survey sent to students connected to their teamwork expectations and skills), as well as creating and maintaining a forum that is alive and constructive, while it also gives some sense of community. Last but not least, students should understand why teamwork is important not only for assignment completion, but also for their future career (perhaps we could also use peer reviews!).

3. ENGAGING. Instead of focusing on solving of exercises which often have over-simplified assumptions, I would rather switch the focus on real-life case studies, and use the advantage of online platforms to connect students with professionals (from other locations as well), in a setting where the students will get the material they need for some of the assignments directly by interacting with these professionals (e.g by cnducting online interviews in order to get specific information, rather than taking it directly from the course book)

4. BALANCED: Firstly, i would even out the course workload. Secondly, i would clearly state in the course curriculum a more realistic estimation of the weekly workload (since, at the moment, it seems grossly underestimated). Third, since we should ideally strive for getting all the course preparations and parts ready before the actual course start (realistically this never seems to happen…), students should already know all the important deadlines, so that they can plan their time properly. It seems like there was an implicit assumption that online work will mean more efficiency – since there is no time spent on commuting – which we now know is wrong..hence planning is equally important (or perhaps more so) in a world where everyone works and studies remotely – often from home.

5. ECONOMICAL: Switching to online platforms meant we could share more easily information, as well as simply post links instead of for example, having to print out material or buy books. I also wrongly thought that more information and additional resources would help my students – but i was wrong. For example, i wanted to use some videos i created for a slightly different course, since i thought it was very good material i have put a lot of time into (so, sligthly emotional attachment;). However, many students wondered why i posted those videos and if they were required for the exam – and now i realising i shouldn’t have uploaded them. I realise now that it is very important to only keep relevant material, reducing significantly what is currently uploaded on the course website..

6. REFLECTIVE: I feel this part is completely absent from the course. I like the idea of having summaries and short quizzes / self-assessment questions on a regular basis (e.g. by the end of each lecture or module). I could also use break-out rooms and / or tools like kahoot for this purpose!

7. GRADUAL: The course structure was mainly based on teachers’ availability, which i think is the wrong approach. Instead, we should focus on having a logic order of difficulty: starting from the easiest concept to the most advanced ones, even if we would have to switch teacher’s schedule in order to do this; and it applies as well to the team assignments, which should be given in the right order (of complexity).

Reference:

Weller, Martin; van Ameijde, Jitse and Cross, Simon (2018). Learning Design for Student Retention. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 6(2)