Modus operandi for ethical action in social and health care in the era of digitalisation

The ethical operational model developed in SotePeda 24/7 project in 2018-2020 has since its launch been used in continuous learning in social and health care. The model was developed to work as a tool in identification of ethical issues in the digitising operational environment of social and health care, as well as to support ethical evaluation and decision-making. When the ethical operational model is embraced, it results into internalizing the reflective process of the model and increases the ability to face ethical dilemmas in the mode of modus operandi indicating socio-culturally established ways of engaging and of doing things. Our aim in this study is to evaluate the experiences gained of the implementation of the ethical operational model in continuous learning in social and health care. As research methods we apply qualitative evaluation: program theory-based and systems approach. As material of the study, we address the experiences gained from the practical use of the model. Additionally, we scrutinize the ethical operational model as an artefact, as co-constructed object, and make use of the multifaceted data from the time of developing the model. The results of our study indicate that when the ethical operational model has been systematically used in continuous learning, the experiences have been overall positive, increasing awareness and ethical competence of the participants. From the point of view of its systemic impact, the scrutiny of the ethical operational model as an artefact, indicates that the focal constituents embedded enable even those new to the model to engage in it and to develop the content further via reflection. We conclude that the ethical operational model has found its way in active use as means of continuous learning in social and health care. The model may gradually become infused in digital era practices and be vitally present in action as modus operandi

Teaching at Scale: Instructor Experiences with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs are large online courses in which any individual with access to the internet can enroll, usually for free. Distance and online education are not new, but the scale and scope of MOOCs raise novel questions about access to higher education, faculty work, and the adoption of new technologies for teaching and learning. There is little literature on the motivations, experiences and behaviors of faculty who teach MOOCs. This dissertation study seeks to illuminate this unexamined aspect of faculty work by answering the following research question: Why do faculty teach MOOCs, and how do their beliefs and experiences inside and outside the university shape their MOOC experience? I investigate the question of why university faculty decide to participate in a new and potentially risky form of online teaching, and how their beliefs, values, and experiences are connected with, and/or shape, their MOOC teaching practices. I conducted a single-institution interview study of MOOC faculty at the University of Michigan. Michigan was an early partner of Coursera, a MOOC company, which announced its first set of offerings in April 2012. My methodology is derived from recent approaches to phenomenology (e.g. Seidman, 2005). I interviewed 16 U-M faculty and instructors who had taught at least one MOOC as of March, 2015. I also conducted observations at events where MOOC instructors were presenting as panelists and likely to be in attendance, and collected contextual information from publicly available videos, news coverage, and articles that involved the participants. Using a phenomenological approach to interviewing and analysis, I conducted multiple interviews with each participant, focusing on their lived experience and meaning-making of the MOOC experience. The professional growth perspective outlined by O’Meara, Terosky, and Neumann (2008) provides a set of sensitizing concepts for my approach to understanding MOOC faculty. The findings provide a set of profiles of the study participants as well as thematic analysis on participants’ motivations for MOOC teaching, and their experiences. I identified four major reasons why instructors chose to teach a MOOC. There was rarely a single motivating factor, but rather several considerations that contributed to the decision. They were: Desire for a platform, interest in experimentation, altruism, and an aim to raise the profile of either themselves or their programs. Among the experiences of MOOC faculty, I note several themes, including: MOOC instructors’ assertions that they learned a great deal about teaching from doing the MOOC; the contrast between participants who felt isolated in their MOOC work and those who made connections; the increased visibility that came with MOOC teaching, which was sometimes a source of awkwardness and discomfort; and the balancing act MOOC teaching required, because of the enormous time demands of producing a MOOC and the already busy lives of successful faculty. This study makes several contributions to the research on faculty work lives. First, provides insight into the experiences of faculty adopting a new educational technology in the early stage of development; MOOCs are new learning technologies that affect the way faculty teach, learn, and interact with students and that thus deserve study. It also evaluates the faculty growth framework, which is relatively new, as an analytical lens, as well as suggest possible expansions to the framework based on the findings emerging from my study.PHDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145913/1/mollyak_1.pd

Teaching SQL in an On-line Learning Environment: Considering for Selecting a relational database

In today’s business environment, students entering the workplace are expected to have problem-solving skills as well as an understanding of fundamental database concepts. Interns and new hires must be able to identify, extract and manipulate data that typically reside in a relational database. To meet this expectation, students are introduced to database concepts and SQL in a variety of courses. This paper discusses instructor considerations when selecting a database management system for teaching SQ on-lin

Data Visualization in Online Educational Research

This chapter presents a general and practical guideline that is intended to introduce the traditional visualization methods (word clouds), and the advanced visualization methods including interactive visualization (heatmap matrix) and dynamic visualization (dashboard), which can be applied in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. This chapter also presents the potentials of each visualization method for assisting researchers in choosing the most appropriate one in the web-based research study. Graduate students, educational researchers, and practitioners can contribute to take strengths from each visual analytical method to enhance the reach of significant research findings into the public sphere. By leveraging the novel visualization techniques used in the web-based research study, while staying true to the analytical methods of research design, graduate students, educational researchers, and practitioners will gain a broader understanding of big data and analytics for data use and representation in the field of education

Engineering education for sustainable development: using online learning to support the new paradigms

This paper explores the experiences of three academic members of the University of Nottingham Open Online Course (NOOC) and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) team, comprising an engineer (tutor), an engineering education specialist (facilitator) and a specialist in higher education pedagogy (convenor). The paper explores notions of what makes for effective teaching of sustainability within a multidisciplinary online context, and the extent to which this experience has impacted upon personal behaviours and attitudes to sustainability, from an Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) perspective. Team members’ experiences are further supported by findings from student and learner evaluations of the NOOC and MOOC courses. Key findings of the research include (a) Interdisciplinarity is a strength of the course (b) The course can lead to genuine change in the understanding of sustainability; (c) Teaching sustainability online is different; (d) Involvement in the course impacts upon teaching practices; (e) Cultural and disciplinary diversity within both the course team and the student cohort is a major contributor to the overall sustainable development learning experience in the NOOC/MOOC. It is hoped that the findings of the study will pave the way for engineering and non-engineering educators to explore the potential of integrating sustainability within the modules they teach, via online teaching and learning means

The dinosaur that lost its head: A contribution to a framework using Learning Analytics in Learning Design

This paper presents an approach to the meaningful use of learning analytics as a tool for teachers to improve the robustness of their learning designs. The approach is based on examining how participants act within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) format through learning analytics. We show that a teacher/designer can gain knowledge about his or her intended, implemented and attained learning design; about how MOOC participants act in response to these and about how students are able to develop ‘study efficiency’ when participating in a MOOC. The learning analytics approach makes it possible to follow certain MOOC students and their study behaviour (e.g. the participants who pass the MOOC by earning enough achievement badges) and to examine the role of the moderator in MOOCs, showing that scaffolding plays a central role in studying and learning processes in an educational format such as a MOOC. Key words: MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, data-saturated, learning analytics, learning design, educational design research, LMS

EU–originated MOOCs, with focus on multi- and single-institution platforms

No abstract available

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach