Mir Riyanul Islam

The ONL 231 session comes to an end with this topic. In fact, the end is in terms of scheduled meetings, working on specific topics for two weeks, etc. But I believe that my experiences from this course will be reminding this course time and again throughout my academic career ahead. However, I have three major takeaways on top of the experiences from this course after cruising through the days of PBL, they are (i) Community, several (ii) Tools and (iii) Concepts and Practices.

This course introduced me to a community of instructors who are following prescribed pedagogic ways in their teaching. Being located in a place near the north pole, I got acquainted with fantastic individuals from far western, southern and a bit eastern parts of the world. It was very interesting to know about their practice in the educational institutions of those places. In addition, we had a discussion on the socio-economical perspectives related to educational infrastructures. In terms of individuality, some of the intrinsic characteristics of all got my attention. For example, organizing quality, time management, style of research, knowledge about technologies, etc. I find that I lack many different qualities as an instructor. In the future, I earnestly plan to develop those qualities in myself. Last but not least about the community, after attending this course I know a lot of people from whom to seek guidance if I feel any pedagogic problem.

At the beginning of the course, we were instructed to use several tools and services like Google Drive, WordPress, Discord (for our PBL group only) etc. I was very excited that I have knowledge about these tools, and that I can use them very easily. However, as the course progressed, we were tasked with different topics, and my group members and facilitators (both from the group and course) started mentioning lots of different tools. We also ended up using those tools successfully to converge different solutions for the given topics. Though I knew the use of some of the tools, I was amazed at the functions of these tools with free or specific versions for diverse purposes, such as collaboration, moderating meetings with time constraints, summarizing something in an inclusive way, conducting surveys, etc. Specifically, Canva, Mural, Flinga, Prezi and Padlet are the new tools that I got to know in this course, and I will be using these in my future works in addition to Mentimeter, Miro, etc.

The most important takeaway for me from this course is the pedagogic concepts and practices. The noteworthy concepts are open learning, problem-based learning, learning in communities, etc. Specifically, I am mostly carried away by the concept of open learning. Being an individual from a country where education is not free or government funded, I value it most. I believe that education should be available to everyone, and it is also considered by the book everywhere but not in practice. Platforms of open learning with provision for quality open content would produce more competent and educated people for the countries. Talking about the open content, controlling the content arises which would maintain the quality of content so that unreliable or inappropriate learning is accomplished by the open learners. However, with the vast expansion of networks and technology, learning contents are easily accessible by almost everyone which is of great value to me.

Finally, I would like to wrap up my reflection on the final topic of ONL 231. A big congratulations to my PBl group 05 aka Pack of Bad-ass Learners with the mascot Giffy for completing a successful collaborative learning. The group will be in my heart even if I do not express much as an introverted person. Thanks for being there throughout the course and implicitly influencing me for developing more. Moreover, as a group, we produced four products from each of the previous topics. I would store them to reflect those contents in my academic career and spread them among my fellows. I hope the products will be beneficial for their pedagogic development.

Design of online and blended learning was the most relatable topic for me as I actively take part in the development of several Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by Mälardalen University. As an instructor, I always thrive for ways to make the lessons interesting to the students so that they feel the urge to investigate further and explore the delivered topic. However, in online and blended learning while the students are not directly feeling the presence of the teacher, it is very hard to establish a cognitive connection with the students properly. In some cases, I feel that for online and blended learning, the vital challenge is connecting with the students which keeps the students active and interested in the learning environment. Although, different pedagogic research outlines some of the factors responsible for student retention in online and blended learning. For example, Weller et al. (2018) proposed four factors namely, Design, Presentation, Personal and Contextual factors. In fact, I have witnessed the adverse effect of the Presentation factor on one of my friends in an arbitrary MOOC. The course contained several video lectures that were just some voice-overs with slideshow, and it was clearly felt that the reader was just following a script. For discussions, there were different forums, but they remained dead most of the time, i.e., there was no writing from students or teachers to initiate any discussion. My friend described his experience of the course as boring and not inclusive for active students.

On another note, I have been enrolled in one blended course with an option for both synchronous and asynchronous participation. The course was taking place in one of the universities in the USA and I had the opportunity to participate asynchronously sitting here in Sweden. I found everything was very precisely defined in the course, there were clear instructions about the course rules, required tools, a list of reading materials, etc. Moreover, the online lectures were very inclusive and there were discussion forums for each of the topics where students participated with their enquiries and the teacher had an active presence in the forum along with the students.

To summarize, as an instructor and a student, I had the opportunity to witness different online and blended learning with different qualities. From these experiences, I can conclude that while designing online and blended learning, a teacher should prioritize connecting with the students the most. It might be through different ways, such as interactive sessions, prompt answering to enquiries, etc. However, from the suggested reading materials of this ONL course, I found the questionnaire proposed by Cleveland-Innes and Wilton (2018) to assess oneself as a teacher. I plan to conduct a survey on the courses I will be conducting to assess my teaching practice.

Last but not least, “Design of Online and Blended Learning” was the most preferred topic to me, fortunately, the collaborative group work was combinedly moderated by me as one of the two moderators from our group PBL 05.  As a group, we highlighted the key aspects of designing an effective community for blended learning in a poster.

References:

Weller, M., van Ameijde, J., & Cross, S. (2018). Learning design for student retention. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 6(2). [Available Online]

Cleveland-Innes, M., & Wilton, D. (2018). Guide to blended learning. [Available Online]

Collaborative learning can be viewed as a collection of different educational approaches involving joined intellectual effort by students and teachers together (Smith and MacGregor 1992). It is worth mentioning that traditional classroom activities, e.g., lecturing, listening, or note-taking do not disappear fully in collaborative learning. However, with the change the world has undergone in the past couple of years in terms of technological advancement, collaborative learning has been taken into the virtual space which we know today as networked collaborative learning. In a broader sense, this has taken the education from within-institution to between-institution communities and the Open Networked Learning (ONL) course is an excellent example of networked collaborative learning. In addition, various research studies found this concept profoundly accepted across institutions to enhance the quality of education (Pan and Chen 2023, Prenger et al. 2019). In summary, networked collaborative learning is an effective approach to education that can benefit both students and teachers. With the technology available today to facilitate communication and collaboration, this approach can help students develop important skills and achieve their learning goals while providing teachers with new tools and resources to support their teaching.

Keeping aside the theoretical perspectives of networked collaborative learning, I must say the approaches used in the ONL course helped me as a person to sustain myself throughout the topics. As a doctoral student and teacher at the same time, it was quite hard for me to attend the online sessions regularly. Sometimes, there were pre-scheduled recurrent meetings and some lectures of mine in one of the courses I teach. However, the provision for recording the meetings and webinars, and documenting everyone’s thoughts in the FISh document in the group as a community helped me to update myself. The main aspect was that everything used to be documented whatever we do. This helped not only me but also our group members to cope with the flow of activities towards reaching a solution for each topic. Through the process for each topic, we came to know each of the persons in the group, their working principle, thought processes, motivations etc. These observations helped me at least to figure out my lapses in collaborative learning. It was also mentioned by several group members that they could figure out their shortcomings in the use of technology and they can act accordingly to enhance their digital competence. In some cases, I felt anxious about my lacking in expertise and motivation towards achieving a goal by seeing other’s enthusiasm. I think it was my “social anxiety”. However, this anxiety provoked my thought to overcome several issues like time-planning, how to motivate myself for different tasks etc.

Among my scattered thoughts regarding networked collaborative learning, my major takeaway is that this method creates provision to learn from other’s qualities through positive “social anxiety” and it’s the role of the instructor or community leader to control the effect of the anxiety on the community members in a developing manner. By the way, along with my thoughts on the selected topic, I would like to mention the outcome of this topic from our PBL group. It is a concise guideline to participate in community learning which can be found here.

References:

Smith, B. L., & MacGregor, J. T. (1992). What is collaborative learning? [Avaliable Online]

Pan, H. L. W., & Chen, W. Y. (2023). Networked Learning Communities in Promoting Teachers’ Receptivity to Change: How Professional Learning Beliefs and Behaviors Mediate. Sustainability, 15(3), 2396. [Available Online]

Prenger, R., Poortman, C. L., & Handelzalts, A. (2019). The effects of networked professional learning communities. Journal of teacher education, 70(5), 441-452. [Available Online]

To me, openness is a philosophy that enables a teacher, researcher, or student more insightful in terms of their role in an educational environment. In the case of higher education platforms, it is a sine qua non for all platforms. In fact, I believe that openness and sharing of knowledge not only helps the individuals with whom the knowledge is shared but also the person who is sharing enhances within himself/herself.

This second topic on openness and sharing can be seen from different perspectives. In this blooming era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and vastly connected communities through digital networks, as the PBL-5 group, we carried ourselves to conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis on the use of AI in open learning and presented it as a conversational video between our group mascot Giffy and Chat-GPT. The video can be viewed here.

However, as an individual, I was more interested in the aspects of open licenses for resources which I reflect upon in this blog. As an instructor with experience in teaching Bachelor’s and Master’s students for around eight years, I value engaging and relevant teaching materials. Generally, the traditional teaching materials are kind of boring with lots of theoretical texts and figures. In addition, materials from one source can also be monotonous. To resolve this issue of being tedious with the course materials for the students, openly licensed resources can come in handy. In short, openly licensed resources can be defined as materials that are available for free use, distribution, and modification by acknowledging the creators. These contents can be teaching material by other teachers in the form of tutorials, video lectures, etc. On the other hand, dynamic and eye-catching illustrations of the theoretical figures or diagrams can also be generated using icons and images openly published with license by other professionals.

Including open learning materials in my teaching has allowed me to present a more equitable and relevant learning experience for my students. It is very easy to utilize other materials alongside my own content which helps to meet the urge of knowledge for diverse learning students. Specifically, as a Doctoral Candidate at Mälardalen University (MDU), I am responsible for teaching several online and onsite courses. “Basic Knowledge on Machine Learning” is one of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) offered by MDU. The course is a self-paced course where students go through the lecture notes and videos to learn about the topics. Several videos from other authors are included in the teaching materials to bring multiple perspectives and voices into the courses, helping to create a more well-rounded and dynamic learning experience for the students.

While incorporating additional content to my teaching materials, I was looking for the contents that are permissible for me to reuse. As I started exploring the openly licensed resources, I was surprised by the available information. In addition to regular sites for content (e.g., YouTube), I found that there are many platforms and repositories like OER Commons and OpenStax, that also provide access to high-quality teaching materials. The most awarding part was that these resources are not only free but also customization and adaptation are allowed to meet the specific needs. Here I list some resources that I found helpful in my exploration of open learning materials which also align with the suggested materials for this topic:

• Creative Commons
• OpenStax
• Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons
• OER Quality Standards and Rubrics

In addition to finding appropriate licenses on the reuse of material, there were other challenges too. One of the challenges was to determine the quality and accuracy of the material. As a group of teachers for specific courses, we overcame the challenge by collaborating with other colleagues and utilizing their expertise to evaluate materials. However, there are resources available, such as the OER Quality Standards and Rubrics, that can help ensure that the materials to be used are of high quality and accuracy.

Overall, my experience with finding and using openly licensed resources has been positive and eye-opening. I believe that the use of these resources not only provides more equitable and inclusive education but also aligns with the principles of open learning and the topic of discussion in the ONL 231. I plan to continue to explore and incorporate openly licensed resources into my teaching and to encourage my colleagues to do the same. I hope that my reflections and the outlined resources can be helpful to others in exploring the benefits and possibilities of open learning in addition to the SWOT analysis on the use of AI from our group.

To begin with, I must say “Online Participation and Digital Literacy” is the most appropriate first topic for an Open Network Learning (ONL) course session. Here is the reason, we had eight members in our group to work on this topic and around half of us were around double my age and are vastly experienced in their own domain but lacked critical digital literacy. It resulted in difficulties with their role in this widely digital era of teaching. To me, digital literacy comes before online participation, that is in reverse order of the title of the topic.

According to my opinion, digital literacy is the ability of a person to be able to use different digital tools in his/her regular activities. Since, it is related to more than one specific tool, Lankshear and Knobel argue to use ‘literacies’ rather than ‘literacy’ [1]. However, the concept of visitor and resident of the digital world is very interesting to me as it can be illustrated precisely using a map/grid for one’s digital literacy [2]. This digital literacy map was introduced by David White in a webinar on this topic. In short, being a visitor, individuals decide on the task they wish to undertake with the help of digital tools and go offline or move to another task (e.g., searching for information on Google). On the other hand, the resident mode is all about social presence by posting comments, blogging etc. (e.g., commenting on a friend’s Facebook post). However, one’s digital literacy also spans from personal to institutional use. To make us understand our own digital literacy, David conducted an exercise to draw our own map during the webinar. Here is the map that I drew for myself and I believe that over time the boxes would become smaller or shift sides.

Upon knowing individual digital literacy, one can further work on to further develop themselves with different digital tools. Interestingly there are prescribed ways to develop digital literacies too. There are also lots of peer-reviewed articles that can help individuals to increase their ability to use digital tools. However, from the suggested reading for the topic, the pyramid model by Beetham and Sharpe [3] caught our group’s attention as the centre of the solution to this topic. In short, the pyramid model consists of four aspects: identity, practices, skills and access & awareness. Though it is depicted as a pyramid, to me it is more of a circle because all the aspects come in turn to develop one’s digital literacy. Furthermore, we complemented the pyramid model from teacher and student perspectives with an illustrative and interactive tool. The tool can be accessible at https://onl231pbl05topic1.netlify.app/.

References:

[1] Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (editors), 2008. Digital literacies: Concepts, policies and practices. New York: Peter Lang [Available Online].

[2] David White and Allison Le Cornu, 2010, “Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement,” First Monday, volume 16, number 9 [Available Online].

[3] Developing Digital Literacies, 2014, JISC Guide. [Available Online]

Welcome to my reflection space for the course Open Networked Learning #ONL231.