Rethinking communication in virtual learning environments through the concept of Bildung

The aim of this paper is to discuss the transformative relationship between the self and culture, or Bildung, while considering new technology such as virtual learning environments. It adopts a technocultural educational perspective; the digital world is an extension of the physical world, and as such an extension of humanity. It is the basis for developing identities that are constantly being re-addressed through new encounters with the world. Communication is a central theme in theories of Bildung. From a technocultural standpoint, communication is the space, or interface, where Bildung takes place. In virtual learning environments, there are different ways to communicate, both synchronously and asynchronously. These environments offer communicative spaces where the self is transformed through several actions because of communicating with the software or with other people. The paper suggests rethinking what communication means in education when it is mediated through digital technology. Virtual learning environments make new teaching practices possible that include digital sources and collaborative assignments through intelligent interactions in simulations or social media. Supporting students is crucial for them to learn how to use, understand and navigate these spaces

Cross-school collaboration in the Finnish archipelago through Virtual Learning Environments

Funding: The project was funded by the European Social Fund (ESF).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Redesigning distance courses to support social and teaching presence in adult and upper secondary education

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Designing Hybrid Learning Spaces in Higher Education

As Hybrid Learning Spaces move beyond distinctions between online and offline spaces, they challenge divisions between teacher/student roles, formal/informal contexts and analogue/digital communication and media. This article presents the concept of hybridity in higher education through a concrete example of a trans-national hybrid course collaboration between three teachers and thirty students at Aarhus University, Denmark and Åbo Akademi University, Finland. The course design is examined through theories on hybrid pedagogy, learning spaces and media ecology to suggest five design principles for Hybrid Learning Spaces. The paper argues that higher education has the potential of inviting students to learn in the world, with the world and for the world, in a way that cuts across traditional dichotomies and barriers

Rethinking communication in virtual learning environments through the concept of Bildung

The aim of this paper is to discuss the transformative relationship between the self and culture, or Bildung, while considering new technology such as virtual learning environments. It adopts a technocultural educational perspective; the digital world is an extension of the physical world, and as such an extension of humanity. It is the basis for developing identities that are constantly being re-addressed through new encounters with the world. Communication is a central theme in theories of Bildung. From a technocultural standpoint, communication is the space, or interface, where Bildung takes place. In virtual learning environments, there are different ways to communicate, both synchronously and asynchronously. These environments offer communicative spaces where the self is transformed through several actions because of communicating with the software or with other people. The paper suggests rethinking what communication means in education when it is mediated through digital technology. Virtual learning environments make new teaching practices possible that include digital sources and collaborative assignments through intelligent interactions in simulations or social media. Supporting students is crucial for them to learn how to use, understand and navigate these spaces

Cross-school collaboration in the Finnish archipelago through Virtual Learning Environments

In this feature, I present implications from a cross-school project in the Finnish archipelago (2015–17). Three primary schools and five teachers collaborated with the researcher to extend their classrooms through a Virtual Learning Environment (Fronter, Blackboard Collaborate). Data were analysed with the theory of practice architectures. The schools were part of complex arrangements on several levels that had implications for the success of the remote teaching initiative: classroom level (e.g. digital competence), school level (e.g. joint teacher positions, faculty support) and regional level (e.g. school transport, relevant digital infrastructure)

Virtuellt lärande på distans : en intervjustudie med finländska gymnasiestuderande.

The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the learning experiences of upper secondary school students in a virtual learning environment. The focus of the study is younger students aged 16–18. Virtual learning environments are defined as collaborative, interactive and communicative digital environments. The main research question was to distinguish the meaning of learning given by the participants. Did the participants perceive learning potential in the virtual learning environment, and if so, what signifies learning potential? Sub-questions were: What enhances learning? What might inhibit learning in a distance course? How do the participants relate to their role as distant learners? Four upper secondary schools in Finland took part in the study. Thirteen upper secondary students were interviewed after a distance course in social studies. During the analysis, four main categories were identified: responsibility, freedom, time and communication. A constructivist approach to learning was adopted while analysing the interviews, and the categories were understood through cognitive, affective and social dimensions of learning. The implications of the study are that a student-centred pedagogy and a social constructivist course design have the potential to motivate students to interact to learn, while the software, such as Second Life, Google+ and Wikibooks, offers them the possibility to do so. The study introduces an empirically supported concept, virtual learning. Virtual learning assumes an active learner who manages different learning spaces while communicating with people and metacognitively assessing the learning process. At the same time, students get used to the virtual and everchanging nature of information and knowledge

Redesigning distance courses to support social and teaching presence in adult and upper secondary education

This paper investigates how teachers in adult and upper secondary education promote social and teaching presence by redesigning their distance courses. Social and teaching presence is analysed through the Community of Inquiry model. The implications stem from an ongoing project in Sweden and Finland (2019–2021) called Digital learning environments - equal education through remote and distance teaching (DL). Three schools from the project are used as cases to answer the questions: What do teachers perceive as challenging when designing for presence in distance education? How do teachers work with these challenges to develop presence in distance education? A design-based research approach is used to address the problems teachers identified in their practices. The empirical material includes group discussions, written plans, and presentations. The teacher groups critically examined how and when communication and interactions with students took place in the digital environment. Parallel, they also read research on the topics. The study suggests the teachers promoted social and teaching presence in different ways depending on their school context. In adult education, the courses were flexible regarding time and space, making frequent teacher-student interactions (e.g., chat, email, feedback) important to establish teaching presence. The upper secondary teachers included student-student interactions (e.g., mind maps, quizzes, discussions, peer-feedback) to promote social presence in their course

DIFFRACTING HYBRID DIDAKTIK – RELATIONAL, FLUID, AND FRAGMENTED DIGITAL WRITING TUTORING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The study contributes to the nascent digital academic writing tutoring field by applying posthuman thinking while investigating intimate socio-material relations during a participatory action research project. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), on-campus academic writing workshops moved online to Zoom, Moodle, and Padlet. We became inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s thinkingwith-theories and Haraway’s concept of diffraction when inquiring into how and why humans and more-than-humans made a difference in digital academic tutoring. Lively conversations emerged inbetween the research matters (tutor logbooks, embodied experiences, course materialities) and authors by diffracting them with the posthuman cyborg, hybridity, and Didaktik. The posthuman cyborg questioned what, who mattered, and why, pointing to embedded humans and more-than-humans shaping fragmented digital relations. Hybridity brought fluidity and fusions of different educational dimensions (openness/structure, teacher/student) to the study. Didaktik suggested that fluid tutoring structures (curriculum) and institutional politics (study credits) interfered with the teacher-student collaboration. We propose a posthuman relational, fluid, and fragmented framework called a hybrid Didaktik when developing teacher-student collaboration across several digital systems. By inviting materialities alongside human experiences into discussions about digital teaching, new practices sensitive to socio-material and political relations may unfold in higher education

Mot en ämnesintegrativ helhetssyn – ett digitalt utvecklingsprojekt i finländsk lärarutbildning

The school teaching in Finland is traditionally divided into different subject lessons. Although several curricula for decades have stressed the importance of integrating subjects to each other, the didactical development of subject integrated teaching has been quite week. The authors of this article are all involved in the training of subject teachers for the Swedish schools in Finland. The article stresses the importance of integrating subject content knowledge into value education. With the theoretical discussion as a starting point, the authors describe their subject integrated project for student teachers in history, social science, religion, philosophy and literature. During the working process it was obvious that the student teachers used their own subject content knowledge, but as they worked in mixed subject groups, they also realized how to co-operate and ask questions to persons with other kinds of subject content knowledge and perspectives. It was challenging for the student teachers to combine new subject integrated perspectives with new digital methods, but considering the ambitions of the curricula, these kinds of integrated processes seems to be important in teacher training