Topic 4: Design for online and blended learning

 

Scenario:

“This year has seen higher education institutions respond to the impact of Covid-19 in an unprecedented manner. Due to this “emergency remote teaching and learning” situation I have been forced to move online and I have learnt a lot. But it seems that many of my colleagues, including myself, simply have copied our campus activities into synchronous online sessions and are providing students with material for self-study. I experience that we lose a lot of student engagement and a sense of community, therefore I believe that I need to re-think my teaching practice. It also feels like my role is changing towards being a designer for learning and to be more of a facilitator, which is new to me. When searching for support in this area, I came across the Community of Inquiry and some other models that looks interesting. But I am not sure how to use these as tools for design and how do I get everyone onboard, it seems like a lot to consider?!”

This topic also made us discuss and reflect a lot in our meetings and it was interesting to learn about the Mural digital tool. We had quite same experiences in our small group about challenges by doing online learning. It can be very hard to feel that you really come in contact with all students and some students attend in a very passive way. On the other had some students can take a big part so that others become quiet.

It could help for the teachers to get familiar with different tools online in order to try to get online education more interactive. By taking part in ONL we have used Padlet, Sutori, Miro and Mural. These are free tools that are very useful. It has been very nice to learn a little about this system and I am going to try to use them in my work as a teacher. I think all of these online tools are very useful if you like to use problem-based learning for our students.