cpreflectionspace

Now two more weeks have passed of the ONL252 course that I’m taking and we have studied different models for designing learning and different aspects that have to do with teachers’ use of AI tools in the course. I especially liked the podcast of ThinkUDL with Kevin Merry (1) that we were to listen to for Seminar 1 in topic 4 in the ONL252 course. It evoked many thoughts in me.

-Around the fact that it is good if the students can take part of material in different forms

In the podcast, it is brought up that it can take a long time to, for example, put a child to sleep and that you can listen to something in headphones at the same time.

This issue of making study material available in various forms is something that I have discussed with my colleagues. Ahead of an online course, where we expect participants with very diverse backgrounds who probably have a lot of other things going on in their lives, we have talked about how we want the study material to be varied in form, i.e. consist of different types of material such as texts, films, audio files/podcasts around each main topic.

You may be able to listen to an audio file during your evening jogging trip and you may be able to persuade someone to watch the movie with you in the couch – a partner or a child. You might choose to read the text if you manage to get some quiet time alone (if you’re not a planner) or maybe during your allotted hour (if you’re a planner) because you think it’s faster to skim the text to get the main thoughts. Or you avoid the text altogether because it is so complicated to pick up an understanding by reading.

A reflection here is whether I should expect the students to take part of all the study material, or selected parts of it. It is probably good to communicate with the students before what is expected of them and if the different available sources contain the same ideas.

Speaking of AI, there are now several tools that can be used by students to change the format of handed out material, including tools for making audio files/podcasts of text (e.g. NotebookLM (2) and Texthelp (3), the latter a sponsor of the podcast) and to create study questions from handout material (e.g. 4). I know that this type of tool is used by (at least some) students. I certainly believe that this type of aid will be developed more.

It also means that even if I, as a teacher, do not provide material in various forms, I can help the students to create such material, according to what suits their learning. Based on this reasoning, one way to make material available could be to highlight different accessibility enabling tools and how they can be used in connection with teaching.

-About the structure of the teaching

In terms of teaching arrangements, the podcast (1) discusses the cheese sandwich model. The cheese sandwich model is a setup in the style of flipped classroom, which I like, where the students before the lesson study material that they get to work actively with during the lesson and then get to repeat/summarize afterwards based on what they have learned.

In connection with this, I would like to mention a book that I read a few weeks ago that I would like to recommend to new teachers because I think it is a good instruction on how teaching sessions can be set up (5). I also see that the book can work for experienced teachers as a reminder or confirmation of things that they do right and that make the teaching work. I myself felt a recognition factor when reading the book. It contains many practical examples of how activation can be added to classic knowledge-conveying sessions to make them more giving and can thus also serve as an encyclopedia in case of a shortage of ideas. Unfortunately, for those of you not understanding Swedish, I think it’s only available in the Swedish language.

What I think the book highlights above all is, the importance of:

-Clarification of goals

-Repetition

-Activation.

The students can benefit from being active with the first two points. With active learning, students can be helped to take control of their own learning and they can reach higher cognitive levels (1,5).

Repetition is needed to activate long-term memory (5).  One way of repetition, that is suggested in the book, is to link the subject studied during the teaching session to the previous and to the coming, that is to show on the red thread during learning. The students can be involved in this work. For example, they can summarize what they take with them at the end of a session, after they have had a minute to look through notes or after thinking individually, in pairs and in groups. Another way is that they are asked how the teaching session fits with the syllabus and the description of course objectives in it. That this type of discussion is brought up in the course and that the students are asked to participate in it activates the students as learners.

1. Think UDL, Inclusive Impactful Instruction with Kevin Merry, UDL Podcast, Episode 124, available from: Inclusive Impactful Instruction with Kevin Merry – Think UDL https://thinkudl.org/episodes/inclusive-impactful-instruction-with-kevin-merry (2025-12-01)
2. Notebook LM, available from: NotebookLM: AI-Powered Research and Learning Assistant Tool | Google Workspace https://workspace.google.com/products/notebooklm/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1710042-Workspace-DR-EMEA-SE-en-Google-BKWS-EXA-na&utm_content=c-Hybrid+%7C+BKWS+-+EXA+%7C+Txt+-+Gemini+-+Notebook+LM-1690227639835&utm_term=notebook%20lm&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20836966793&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwMrMypGckQMV6xmiAx0_ch3ZEAAYASAAEgI8bvD_BwE (2025-12-01)

3 . Texthelp, available from: Assistive technology for learning | formerly Texthelp | Everway | Texthelp https://www.texthelp.com/ (2025-12-01)

4. Google forms, available from: Create & grade quizzes with Google Forms – Google Docs Editors Help https://support.google.com/docs/answer/7032287?hl=en (2025-12-01)
5. Fleischer Håkan. Föreläsning som studentaktiv metod i högre utbildning (eng. Lecture as a student-active method in higher education). Edition 1. Lund: Studentlitteratur; 2025.

The first thing I thought about when we started studying this topic was that it was about doing something together, talking about a topic, exchanging ideas and maybe coming to some conclusion together. Achieving collective learning could, for example, be about interrupting a lecture with student-active activities. The text Igniting the collective spark (1) made me start thinking about all the emotional ways we can interact with each other, to connect to what I have previously read about group dynamics (e.g. Moreland and Levine’s model of group socialization as it is presented in (2) which refers to e.g. (3)). We have all experienced occasions when group assignments have worked better and worse. The teacher’s job is not only to give out a group assignment, but also to try to shape the surrounding environment (the classroom situation & classroom climate, the physical space and the social space) in which the task is to be done so that, for example, it feels safe and stimulating enough for participation. The teacher should also make sure that the instructions are clear enough for the group to get started and open enough to allow for own thinking. Being a good teacher has many dimensions!

It also comes to my mind that what constitutes constructive collaboration depends on what is considered to be the purpose of collaboration. Then we come back to the basics of management work, that it is important that everyone strives towards the same goal or in the same direction. As it is written about in Igniting the collective spark (1), it can also be the case that groups do not see what type of communication they should have (rational or non-rational exploratory thinking) and then goal achievement can be worse.

1. Ringer, M., Gordon, R. and Vandenbussche, B. (2022). Igniting the collective spark: The relevance of thinking together. The collective spark: Igniting thinking in groups teams and the wider world. Ringer, R. Gordon and B. Vandenbussche. Gent, Grafische Cel: 8-21
2. Thornberg R (2013) Det sociala livet i skolan Socialpsykologi för lärare, 2a upplagan, Liber Ab, Stockholm.
3. Levine J.M and Morland R.L (2003) Group socialization: Theory and Research. I.A.W. Kruglanski and E.T. Higgins (red.) Social psychology: A general reader (s 534-547) New York: Psychology Press.

Open learning, sharing and openness

The second subject area that we were asked to reflect on in the ONL252 course is open learning, sharing and openness. (Looked for a cc licensed picture on the internet for information transfer and illustrates my post with the one picture I found on Openclipart: Picture: openclipart.org/192884 by Merlin2525. I hope this picture can signal better understanding between people.)

Since it has been up for discussion that I should develop a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) based on wishes from the industry, I was interested to find out more about how learning takes place and is evaluated in a MOOC, and why these courses are created (as they are). What does the literature say about MOOCs? This reflection will be a summary of what I, as a newcomer to the field, have learned after a first quick literature search about MOOCs and my thoughts about it.

The word MOOC was coined in 2008 and the field grew in the late 2000s and early 2010s (Baturay, 2015). When I did a quick search with the word MOOC in Google scholar, the first articles that came up for me are from this time period.

Common teaching methods in MOOCs are (Baturay, 2015):

-(Short) Filmed lectures

-To the students given open access literature

-Quiz

-Discussion forum

-Live sessions with course leaders

These forms of teaching require limited course leader time per student, which is important in a MOOC that must be designed to be able to handle many students (Jansen and Schuwer, 2015). The first three I don’t see require any time at all, once the material has been produced, except that it may be necessary to review that the material is still available when there are updates/changes to the technical systems involved. The last two teaching activities require more course leader time. Discussion forums may need to be reviewed by a facilitator to prevent inappropriate content. I reflect on the fact that the time for this can possibly be reduced or removed with appropriate technology. I think such technology is used for social platforms, but I am unsure how this is done and how well the systems work. Anyone who knows, or has knowledge of this?

Quizzes and discussion forums can, in addition to acting as learning, be used for examination in the course. For example, in order to pass the course, students may be required to post in discussion forums and comment on other student’s posts (Baturay, 2015). A reflection is that in the ONL252 course we are examined in this latter way.

Many MOOCs have low throughput rates (lower than/about 10% (Sannicandro et al 2019)), which is perhaps not so strange as they are openly available so that many people can click on them and see if they are interesting for them. One of the reasons given for the low throughput is however that there is not as much personal engagement when interactivity with others is low (Wang et al, 2018; Loh et al, 2024). The use of discussion forums, as mentioned among the common teaching methods above, is a way to increase social interaction, which has been seen to have positive effects along with nudging messages around participation (Loh et al, 2024). Other ways to increase interactivity that have been studied and shown to have positive effects are the use of learning groups and one-to-one interaction with fellow students (Loh et al, 2024). There are also research studies that say that high interactivity in a MOOC can take energy away from learning (Wang et al, 2018), but overall the focus seems to be on achieving increased interactivity. I reflect on the fact that we use learning groups in the ONL252 course together with recorded LIVE sessions with teachers.

In Europe and the US, part of the purposes of the MOOCs have been marketing, to obtain funding opportunities, income generation, to improve pedagogy or cost reduction (Jansen and Schuwer, 2015). When it comes to research on MOOCs, opinions have been expressed after the MOOCs’ start-up period that research should change from studies of engagement to studies of real learning. A lot of focus has been on throughput and just because you have completed the course or passed a quantitative test, for example, it does not mean that  you have increased your conceptual understanding or expert thinking in the field (Reich, 2015).

Examples of what has been studied in research studies include randomly assigning students to two different versions of a MOOC course in order to study the difference in outcomes from the two versions, similarly studying the outcome of randomly giving different virtual rewards for participation in discussion forums, etc (Reich, 2015). Baked in experiments for research purposes have mostly been used to study learning arrangements in general, but also to some extent to study learning in specific subject areas. I reflect on the fact that research is being done on the ONL252 course.

We are in fact all part of a large teaching experiment!

References:

Baturay M.H. (2015), An Overview of the World of MOOCs, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 427-433, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.685.

Jansen, D. and Schuwer, R. (2015). Institutional MOOC strategies in Europe. Status report based on a mapping survey conducted in October – December 2014. EADTU report.

Loh, H.S., van Jaarsveld, G.M., Mesutoglu, C. and Baars, M. (2024) Supporting social interactions to improve MOOC participants’ learning outcomes: A literature. Education Reimagined: The Impact of Advanced Technologies on Learning, https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/handle/2066/305849

Reich J. (2015) Rebooting MOOC Research, Science,  347, 34-35. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1261627

Sannicandro K., De Santis A., Bellini C., Minerva T. (2019) Analysis of completion and dropout rates in EduOpen MOOCs, Giornale Italiano Della Ricerca Educativa. Special issue, 27-42. https://iris.unimore.it/handle/11380/1184619

Wang, W., Guo, L., He, L., & Wu, Y. J. (2018). Effects of social-interactive engagement on the dropout ratio in online learning: insights from MOOC. Behaviour & Information Technology, 38(6), 621–636. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2018.1549595

The first topic we got to study during ONL252 was digital literacy.

As I understand the digital literacy or digital competence concept, it encompasses what you need to function in a world with digital services. As technological advances occur and patterns of behavior change, what is included in digital literacy changes. (Jisc infoNet 2014) Digital literacy is about how you find, receive, evaluate or enjoy, share and disseminate information. You can do this for many purposes, to enrich your free time, to perform at work, to market something or to make a decision about something.

I have learned that digital literacy can be said to be built up of 7-8 fundamental elements (Doug Belshaw 2012, Jisc infoNet 2014): e.g. cognitive, constructive, communicative, civic, critical, creative, confident, cultural (Doug Belshaw 2012). I now wonder if I have missed something essential in my previous description? At the moment, my thoughts don’t get started on these elements, but it certainly does for others.

I have also understood that there are those who liken digital literacy to a language, which you cannot or have difficulty learning to speak fluently unless you were born in the digital age (Jiscnetskills 2014). This analogy feels relevant, but can nurture a view of older people as dinosaurs that doesn’t really fit into the present and lead to age discrimination in different situations.

I reflect on the fact that different generations tend to have different platforms that they prefer to use (e.g. Bucht 2021). Does this mean that they have different levels of digital literacy or simply different digital literacy? Can the different digital literacy levels be said to be better or worse in general or can it only be linked to specific situations that the people who have the literacy are in? I draw the parallel between different platforms in the digital world and different restaurants and nightclubs in the city in the non-digital world. Different (age) groups prefer different places. This is certainly not a new parallel…

You can describe your digital literacy by drawing a map that shows where you are visitors and residents, and this can help you understand your own literacy and also be used for discussions about similarities and differences with others. (White, D. & Le Cornu, A. 2011) Personally, I am currently mostly a visitor on social platforms. I prefer to converse via direct messages to people I know. At work, we can have digital meetings and sometimes we send out advertisements for some event we arrange on social media.

One reflection I have is that one area of digital literacy is probably to set limits for how much you are online. Choosing time and tools that free up time outside the digital world. I think it’s good as a human being to just be in the real world sometimes for relaxation. I get the feeling that several experienced digital users who have been residents on several platforms have made this type of value decision and perhaps left some platforms/applications or whatever to call them because they did not provide enough value – perhaps to replace with others, perhaps to free up more free time.

Something that I take with me, David White said during the lecture he gave us on October 1st, 2025, that we as teachers can see ourselves as “Arbiters of connections”. It is something that I feel I can work on developing as in my professional role as an educator.

Doug Belshaw (2012) The essential elements of digital literacies, TEDxWarwick Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78

Jiscnetskills (2014) Visitors and residents, Available from: https://youtu.be/sPOG3iThmRI?si=AOCuQvdhEFx0qdgi

Jisc infoNet (2014) Developing digital literacies, Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

Bucht C (2021) Media Barometer 2019: Theme generations, Nordicom, Gothenburg. Available from: https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:norden:org:diva-7231

White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).

Exciting.

Now I’m publishing my first post on WordPress, open for everyone to read!

I’m currently learning how to edit in this tool, in order to post my own thoughts and reflections on this page in the future.

I follow ONL252 and the first topic out will be digital literacy!