My experience : Open Learning Bingo

 

 

OKP Learning Experience Bingo 2.0

Based on yo​​ur previous reflections and experience gained throughout the course, summarize and critically reflect on your learning and development. We would like to remind you that this reflection is mandatory if you want to receive your ONL certificate. You can use the questions below to guide your reflection:

  • What are the most important things you have learned through your engagement in the ONL course? Why?

I must honestly say that I was a bit skeptical of how an online course could create so much engagement, so it has opened my eyes that online courses with the necessary tools can be very engaging. The most challenging aspect of online education can be keeping students motivated and therefore engaged throughout the course. It’s been very valuable learning about how communities of practice and networked collaborative communities within a purposely oriented and specifically designed course and activities can have a major impact on how students learn in online or blended environments.

 

  • How will your learning influence your practice?

I find that this course has provided me with the necessary tools to face any shortcomings in my own practice when it comes to student engagement and push me to seek new ways to always try to accommodate the somewhat static academic curriculum to an active and networked community.

 

  • What are your thoughts about using technology to enhance learning/teaching in your own context?

Technology is no longer the future, it is present in our daily life and we are moving to a stage where online and offline are becoming blurred. I see technology has an enormous advance in terms of communication, developing teaching practices around online tools and networks seems that is the new normality and should be integrated always within in a clear framework.

 

  • What are you going to do as a result of your involvement in ONL? Why?

I will try to apply the collaborative approach as I think is a way that students can see themselves as part of a whole and limit the number of individual tasks.

 

Online+Offline

My teaching experience during covid was also altered during covid19 and part of it moved online but not entirely as Sweden did not apply very strong measures as many other countries but it was definitely blended. In my case it was actually an advantage, since many of my courses require the active use of technology such as 3D printing software being able to teach students live. It actually made things easier as students could follow exactly from their own computer what I was doing on mine.

According to Hodges (2020) , careful planning for online learning includes not just identifying the content to cover but also carefully tending to how you’re going to support different types of interactions that are important to the learning process. In this sense it was easier to design some of my courses online precisely for the online core elements of the course. The main reason is that it facilitates communicating the contents of the course if they can be in front of a computer screen as myself and practice while I explain. In this case, the possibility to work online when teaching online content as discussed by Vaughan et al.(2013)  “provides a conceptual order that goes beyond rigid recipes

Following the Community of Inquiry Educator Survey” I try to support students especially through points 24 and 15 by exploration and facilitation tools that keep them engaged and participating in productive dialogue.

I think the advancement of technology is blurring the online and offline boundaries and at some point these differentiations will be minor. We can see that many companies are blending  AR/VR technologies and the use of avatars in virtual spaces where your colleagues can see your gestures and listen to sounds is becoming more common. Maybe the question is how the content of offline education will adapt to a world where many things happen online.

 

 

Hodges, C. et.al (2020). The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning. EDUCAUSE review.

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press. Chapter 1 “The Community of Inquiry Conceptual framework”.

Motivation and Network

 

I find that the technology can enable many collaborative networks in learning processes. However, these need to be tailored to the intent of the specific educational goals or practices that must be clearly established. Also the network should have both an individual and collective function. According to Wegner each community  “is engaged in the production of its own practice—in relation to the whole system, of course, but also through its own local negotiation of meaning”.(p.4) In this sense, participants of an online course should be able to find a network as well as a clear purpose in it in order to maintain it. According to Capdeferro “frustration is a common phenomenon among students involved in online collaborative learning experience” and the main source of frustration is “the imbalance in the level of commitment, responsibility, and effort”.(2012, p44) It is of course, difficult to avoid this situation since in there might be some students that might find more motivation than others in a particular subject. But if each person was given a specific role and responsibility within a specific common purpose these experiences could be minimised.  That is why, I personally find that gamification in online learning processes can make a network to be really connected since both individuals and collective goals can be easily established. Especially, if some value is established that emphasises the importance of the connectivism in the network.In this case is to find the worth in the network. As Dron and Anderson connectivism “shares many of the attributes of constructivism, notably in its valorization of diversity and a philosophical basis that knowledge is constructed in a social context”. (2014, p.59). Therefore, give a context and a worth to the network can maybe motivate and accelerate online learning processes.

 

Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?.

Dron, J. & Anderson, T. (2014). Teaching crowds: Learning and social media. Athabasca University Press.

 

Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179-198). Springer London

Technology & Openness

Growing up in Korea I have mixed views and perceptions on open education. Confucianism values are deeply rooted in our culture making education a very important tool for social mobility. In the past, it meant that a farmer could obtain a high ranking position by passing an official public exam. However, with economic development the society became more competitive and an “education industry” emerged with many private after-school academies known as hagwons to prepare students for an increasing competition.

Although public education up to high school is free there is a sense that if students also attend hagwons, which are expensive, they will be better prepared or it will be easier to enter high ranked universities and therefore get a better job. Also, there is some prestige associated with certain institutions or brand schools. Even these days with institutions fostering OEP, exclusivity within an educational environment and institutional prestige are perceived as powerful and faster ways of social advancement.

Contrary to Ragupathi’s analogy of openness in education with coffee houses, in Korea it is very difficult to “decouple learning from specific learning spaces” since people will always look at what school, hagwon or university you go to. My perspective aligns more with Cronin in the sense that “the use of open practices by learners and educators is complex, personal, and contextual; it is also continually negotiated” 

As an educator I find that sharing and connecting information offers infinite possibilities and I myself like to update my knowledge and find that the best way to do it is online. Flexibility is one of the biggest advantages I see since every person has their own pace and immediate access from anywhere with an online connection is one of the main benefits of open education. 

The main limitations that I can see with openness is that unless the content is carefully selected and organized it is easy to get lost in the vast array of data available. Also, I find that institutions in many parts of the world profit from being private,  a prestige sense associated with traditional institutional education prevails. In these, many see a form of cultural and social capital that brings benefits beyond the purely educational ones.

The role of open educational resources at my institution still shares the same limitations as a conventional education platform. Also the nature of the studies taught at the Art Academy are heavily structured around practice although we have some online workshops we encourage a studio approach based education.

I find that technology can be instrumental in the categorization and organization, and sharing of knowledge. However, it is more important how institutions are going to keep the knowledge they generate stay relevant and doesn’t become isolated.

Ancient Indian Universities | HINDUISM AND SANATAN DHARMA

Picture above : Nalanda University, India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher-learning_institutions

 

Cronin, C. (2017). Open Education, Open Questions. EDUCAUSE Review 52, no. 6 (November/December 2017)

Ragupathi, K. (2020). Being open: drawing parallels with the Coffee House model.

Reflection Topic 1 resident vs visitor

As an individual I consider my self to have a strong digital literacy, in both my personal and professional life. I consider myself to be both a visitor and a resident though when it comes to social media apps I limit my presence. I tend to separate my personal and professional life identities when it comes digital literacy. Professionally, I use digital tools for learning and teaching subjects such as 3d printing, sketchup, photoshop and other IT skills that normally are not used within the fine art context as it tends to be associated with offline techniques such as painting however this is changing.I do find in that case that my journey is characterized by a strong technological background such as electronic engineering and now I am in an environment such as art in which the digital literacy in terms of it skills tends to be quite limited so it definitely poses a challenge as an educator and artist.

ONL is a developmental process through which I hope can benefit from or be inspired and apply as a lecturer to help my students with their own learning process. My experiences from ONL are mixed since I find that its a great tool for collaborative projects and sharing ideas but is limited when it comes to receiving feedback.

 

Reference

Ruixue Liu and Changdi Shi, Exploring different types of interaction on collaborative learning in online platforms, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 23, No. 4, 2018

 

First avatar from the 2 week

From 2nd zoom session :

My avatar for Miro, from https://3davatar.info/