A reality check: Taking authentic e-learning from design to implemntation

Tampere University of Applied Sciences has developed a postgraduate certificate program for teaching in higher education that is currently being implemented at Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates. In the design of the program, the principles of authentic e-learning (Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver 2010) have been used as a guideline. This paper examines how the design principles have been transferred into practice and how the elements of authentic learning have been realized from the student perspective. The experiences of the students have been mapped in a survey conducted after the first semester of the program. The data was analyzed with the help of the authentic e-learning framework in order to identify the challenges and successes regarding the implementation of the elements of authentic e-learning and thus draw guidelines for future development

Scientific Literacy in the digital age: tools, environments and resources for co-inquiry

This paper describes some European and International projects to promote Scientific Literacy in the digital age as well as technologies, environments and resources for co-inquiry. The aim of this research is also to describe computer applications, software tools and environments that were designed to support processes of collaborative inquiry learning to promote Scientific Literacy. These tools are analyzed by describing their interfaces and functionalities. The outcomes of this descriptive research points out some effects on student learning and competences developed known from the literature. This paper argues the importance of promoting scientific citizenship not only through schools and Universities (formal learning), but also non-credit online courses and community-based learning programmes (non-formal context), as well as daily life activities, educational open digital materials through social networks (informal scenario)

Learning outcomes and their assessment: putting Open University pedagogical practice under the microscope

The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university devoted to distance learning. It is also the UK's largest university with over 200,000 students overall. Around 150,000 students are studying undergraduate level courses. Over the last decade major policy changes have impacted on UK higher education. Following the recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Dearing Report, 1997) and the establishment of the Quality Assurance Agency, all UK universities have been required to define learning outcomes for their programmes and link learning outcomes to teaching and assessment. This major pedagogic shift led the OU to establish the Learning Outcomes and their Assessment (LOTA) project to re-examine the ways its courses are planned, designed, delivered and assessed, and to initiate necessary institution-wide changes. Explicitly linking outcomes, assessment and teaching, actively using assessment for learning, and supporting academic staff development are key elements in enhancing student learning

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum e-in-science

This milestone report explores some innovative possibilities for e-in-science practice to enhance teacher capability and increase student engagement and achievement. In particular, this report gives insights into how e-learning might be harnessed to help create a future-oriented science education programme. “Innovative” practices are considered to be those that integrate (or could integrate) digital technologies in science education in ways that are not yet commonplace. “Future-oriented education” refers to the type of education that students in the “knowledge age” are going to need. While it is not yet clear exactly what this type of education might look like, it is clear that it will be different from the current system. One framework used to differentiate between these kinds of education is the evolution of education from Education 1.0 to Education 2.0 and 3.0 (Keats & Schmidt, 2007). Education 1.0, like Web 1.0, is considered to be largely a one-way process. Students “get” knowledge from their teachers or other information sources. Education 2.0, as defined by Keats and Schmidt, happens when Web 2.0 technologies are used to enhance traditional approaches to education. New interactive media, such as blogs, social bookmarking, etc. are used, but the process of education itself does not differ significantly from Education 1.0. Education 3.0, by contrast, is characterised by rich, cross-institutional, cross-cultural educational opportunities. The learners themselves play a key role as creators of knowledge artefacts, and distinctions between artefacts, people and processes become blurred, as do distinctions of space and time. Across these three “generations”, the teacher’s role changes from one of knowledge source (Education 1.0) to guide and knowledge source (Education 2.0) to orchestrator of collaborative knowledge creation (Education 3.0). The nature of the learner’s participation in the learning also changes from being largely passive to becoming increasingly active: the learner co-creates resources and opportunities and has a strong sense of ownership of his or her own education. In addition, the participation by communities outside the traditional education system increases. Building from this framework, we offer our own “framework for future-oriented science education” (see Figure 1). In this framework, we present two continua: one reflects the nature of student participation (from minimal to transformative) and the other reflects the nature of community participation (also from minimal to transformative). Both continua stretch from minimal to transformative participation. Minimal participation reflects little or no input by the student/community into the direction of the learning—what is learned, how it is learned and how what is learned will be assessed. Transformative participation, in contrast, represents education where the student or community drives the direction of the learning, including making decisions about content, learning approaches and assessment

Co-creating an educational space

In this paper I generate my living educational theory as an explanation of my educational influences in learning as I research my tutoring with practitioner researchers from a variety of workplace backgrounds. I will show how I have closely inter-related the teaching learning and research processes by providing opportunities for participants to accept responsibility for their own learning and to develop their capacity as learners and researchers. My PhD enquiry ‘How am I creating a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness?’ (Farren, 2006) was integral to the development of my own practice as higher education educator. I clarified the meaning of my embodied values in the course of their emergence in practice. I try to provide an educational space where individuals can create knowledge in collaboration with others. I believe dialogue is fundamental to the learning process. It is a way of opening up to questions and assumptions rather than accepting ready-made solutions. The originality of the contribution is in the constellation of values and understandings I use as explanatory principles in my explanations of educational influence. This constellation includes the unusual combination of an educational response to the flow of energy and meaning in Celtic spirituality and the educational opportunities for learning opened up by digital technology

Uurimuslik õpe veebipõhises õpikeskkonnas: uurimusliku õppe protsesside teoreetiline raamistik

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsioone.Uurimuslik õpe on tänapäeva hariduses, eriti loodusainete õpetamisel, väga tähtsal kohal. Sellest annavad tunnistust nii mitmed üle-euroopalised dokumendid kui ka Eestis 2011. aastal vastu võetud uus õppekava, mis seab uurimusliku õppe kesksele kohale. Uurimuslik õpe on meetod, mis võimaldab õpilasel olla teadlase rollis – lahendada probleeme ning uurida erinevaid nähtusi. Õppimine käib teadlase tööle omaste tegevuste kaudu: sõnastatakse hüpoteese, planeeritakse katseid ning pakutakse lahendusi uuritavatele probleemidele. Uusi teadmisi ei ammutata enam õpetaja dikteerimisel, vaid õpilane ise võtab endale vastutuse teadmiste omandamisel. Nii on ka suurem tõenäosus, et uus teadmine on õpilase jaoks mõistetavam ning püsib ka paremini meeles. Seejuures on ka õpetajal oma roll – ta on suunaja, abistaja ning tagasisidestaja. Uurimuslikku õpet võib läbi viia nii tava- kui virtuaalses klassiruumis. Virtuaalne klassiruum võimaldab teha katseid, mis tavaoludes oleksid võimatud. Üheks näiteks on kõnealuse doktoritöö käigus välja arendatud uurimuslik õpikeskkond „Noor teadlane“ (http://bio.edu.ee/teadlane), mis on mõeldud eelkõige 6.–9. klassi õpilastele bioloogia õppimiseks. Selles on viis uurimuslikku ülesannet, milles otsitakse vastuseid näiteks küsimusele „Miks lihased väsivad erinevalt?“. Igas ülesandes teevad õpilased läbi teadustööle omased etapid: määratlevad probleemi, sõnastavad uurimisküsimuse ja hüpoteesi, planeerivad ja viivad läbi katse, analüüsivad katsetulemusi ning teevad selle põhjal järeldused. Doktoritöö tulemusena koostati uurimusliku õppe mudel, mis aitab paremini mõista, kuidas uurimuslikud protsessid omavahel seostuvad, ning võimaldab seeläbi uute uurimuslike õppematerjalide koostamisel seda arvestada. Lisaks selgus, et rakendades kompleksset uurimusliku õppe keskkonda, on võimalik arendada õpilaste uurimuslikke oskusi ja ainealaseid teadmisi. Leiti, et uurimuslike oskuste arengut mõjutavad ka oskuste omavahelised seosed ning uurimuslikud üldteadmised.Inquiry-based learning has an important role in today’s science education. This is confirmed by many European-level documents and recent curriculum reforms in Estonia, where inquiry-based learning is an umbrella term for science related subjects. Inquiry-based learning is a learning method where students take on the role of a scientist, mirroring activities employed by scientists—formulate hypotheses, carry out investigations and collect evidence to propose explanations about the investigated phenomena. Teachers no longer are the primary source of knowledge. Students take their own responsibility for obtaining new knowledge. The teacher’s role is to enable the construction process as a facilitator and to provide resources. Inquiry-based learning is applicable in regular or virtual classrooms. The latter enable conducting experiments impossible in a regular classroom (e.g., experiments that are dangerous). One example of such virtual classrooms is the inquiry-based learning environment Young Researcher (http://bio.edu.ee/teadlane), which is designed for students from the 6th to the 9th grade for learning biology. There are five inquiry-based tasks that need to be solved (e.g., “Why do muscles wear down differently?”). The entire learning process is structured according to inquiry learning stages: problem identification; research question and hypothesis formulation; planning and carrying out an experiment; analysis and interpretation of data; and drawing conclusions. As a result of the doctoral study, a theoretical model of inquiry-based learning was constructed that serves as a conceptual structure for showing how inquiry processes are related to each other. Additionally, it was revealed that applying a comprehensive inquiry-based learning environment improves students’ inquiry skills and general inquiry knowledge; also, it was found that the development of inquiry skills is influenced by the interactions between such skills, as well as by general inquiry knowledge

Developing Learning Communities in Fully Online Spaces: Positioning the Fully Online Learning Community Model

The Fully Online Learning Community (FOLC), developed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), is a social-constructivist model, addressing a paradigm shift in employment skills, and supporting key elements of transformational learning. Adopting a Problem-based Learning (PBL) approach to activity design, FOLC has served as basis for both undergraduate and graduate, fully online degree programs for almost a decade. In this time, it has demonstrated its ability to facilitate richly collaborative, socially cohesive, and constructively critical, learning communities supported by a flexible array of synchronous and asynchronous digital affordances. FOLC represents a “divergent fork” of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) design to foreground the synergistic dynamics of social and cognitive presence, the role of professional educators as co- learners, the community-oriented nature of knowledge construction, the mediating role of digital competence and open technologies in fully online learning, and the transformational potential of democratized communication and assessment practices. Having positioned FOLC conceptually, a developing research agenda, aimed at grounding the FOLC on a broader body of empirical data, is presented. The underlying argument is that rich, transformative learning communities can be established in fully online programs, and these communities can have a significant democratizing effect on participants and the broader social context

Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin

Thinking, Interthinking, and Technological Tools

Language use is widely regarded as an important indicator of high quality learning and reasoning ability. Yet this masks an irony: language is fundamentally a social, collaborative tool, yet despite the widespread recognition of its importance in relation to learning, the role of dialogue is undervalued in learning contexts. In this chapter we argue that to see language as only a tool for individual thought presents a limited view of its transformative power. This power, we argue, lies in the ways in which dialogue is used to interthink – that is, to think together, to build knowledge co-constructively through our shared understanding. Technology can play an important role in resourcing thinking through the provision of information, and support to provide a space to think alone. It can moreover provide significant support for learners to build shared representations together, particularly through giving learners access to a wealth of ‘given’ inter-related texts which resource the co-construction of knowledge