Unit 4 Supporting Learners

In unit 4 we are asked to consider supporting learners and Lars suggested the following as our pbl trigger......

“I am part of a team that run a four week course in how to be an online tutor. This course is designed to give our tutors the theory, research and practical experience of being both an online tutor and a student, to help them support their own distance learners. However, one of the questions we always get asked is how do you keep distance learners actively engaged? We ask it of ourselves frequently because of the lowering enthuasism of our tutors as the course goes on, and external pressures impact on their time. So any focus on solving this riddle would be welcome!”

We all agreed that this would be suitable considering the aims of this unit.  After a short discussion to consider the issues raised we created the following LO's,

On successful completion of Unit 4, the participants will be able to:

LO1: Understand how to keep a tutor engaged and active as the online course goes on

LO2: Evaluate how to keep the students engaged in an online course

LO3: Create a plan how to support students during an online course

We have acknowledged that creating LO's requires some discussion and there may be a number of drafts before finally agreeing.  This is important to ensure that the LO's direct us toward achieving our aims.

We have an additional time restraint for this unit as one of our group is taking time out so we agreed to have our LO's and roles sorted quickly.

Lars created our shared learning space in google drive.  This seems to have become our preferred option.  It is easily accessed and user friendly in terms of viewing, sharing and editing shared documents.   I particularly like that multiple authors can edit documents in real time and changes are automatically saved by the software.  

For this unit it is my role to collate and present findings for feedback.  After doing some preliminary reading Neil suggested that 'top tips' might be appropriate and we agreed that this seemed to be how our work was coming together.

Here is a summary of our unit 3 work, please feel free to comment


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B13BcQPYh3cfYmdOcXB5QU8zeWM/image?pagenumber=1&w=138

Unit 3, where do we start?

In preparation for Unit 3 we started early with a Hangout, which enabled us to discuss the unit and our own expectations. This was helpful and set the scene for the work to follow.

A new discussion space was created by Aida.  https://plus.google.com/109085261194966910437/posts

We then needed to decide on a suitable PBL trigger/scenario that aligned with the aims of this unit. We very quickly managed to agree on a suitable scenario and from that some great team work enabled us to identify 3 learning outcomes.

We divided the outcomes between ourselves and set off to 'Investigate' ....

As we had used drop box for the PBL pilot we wanted to try something different so agreed to try Google Drive.

For this unit Aida and Lars enjoyed collaborating on learning objective 2 by means of hangout, email and sharing work in google drive.  The use of google drive enabled us all to see the work done by others and comment on findings.  A summary was produced as a poster which was made available for appraisal by the group and facilitator before a final draft being ready for sharing. This enabled us to consolidate learning and check that objectives had been met.  We were unsure how to share our findings with the FDOL community and sought advice from our facilitator.

So far no-one has offered any feedback but we do welcome any comments.  Neil has posted our poster on the following discussion forum;

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/102772793404931941723

Evaluation of the Pilot PBL session

Evaluation of our PBL pilot  

We decided to use dropbox for our pilot as a method of sharing information with each other.  This is a free online data storage facility that allows you to give certain people access to folders so that they can add their own files, download files, edit and re-share.


This seems to be a secure site so, if the link below doesn't work and you would like access please let us have your drop box acc ID so that we can share with you.

Group 1 PBL pilot dropbox


So, in terms of 'Investigating', as well as adding our thoughts for each objective to our discussion - Pilot pages we also uploaded documents (for example articles) that we thought might be of interest.

Aida who had the role of note taker, summarised how we had approached this task and this was also stored to dropbox.

We had proposed a second hangout at the end of the pilot....

During the hangout we discussed if we thought the methods used had been successful and everyone agreed that yes, after some familiarisation and learning how to navigate between sites our home discussion page and drop box had been user friendly.  We did however agree that we would use any opportunities to try new forums/tools during this process as it was after all a learning experience for us all and we all appear very eager to try new things.

On reflection we may have missed an opportunity to consolidate learning. Information was shared well and discussed a little but perhaps we should have found some mechanism for checking if each of our learning objectives had been satisfactorily addressed or if any questions remained?

This is worth considering for future units as it is important to consolidate learning.  There is no specific prompt for this with the Cool_FISh model but perhaps we can set this into our group contract?

We all seemed very happy with our good progress so far!

Pilot online PBL

We had identified a problem and decided to address this using the Cool_FISh (Nerantzi and Uhlin 2012) model.

Trigger :

'In our group there are participants who have never

experienced PBL before'

Our discussions can be seen here - FDOL 131 Group 1 Pilot

Step 1: Focus

• What do we see?
• How do we understand what we see?
• What do we need to find out more about?
• Specify learning issues/intended learning outcomes!
  
  

Step 2: Investigate

• How and where are we/am I going to find answers?
• Who will do what and by when?
• What main findings and solutions do we/I propose?
  • 
    
  
  
  
  

Step 3: Share

• How are we going to present our findings?
• What do we want to share with the FDOL community?
• How can we provide feedback to another group?
• What reflections do I have about my learning and our group work?

• • • 
      

Preparation for FDOL 131 PBL

UNIT 1 Orientation 

This gave us all chance to log in, familiarise ourselves with learning spaces and to make contact with group members. 

Our original communication, which we did via our group space 

FDOL 131 PBL group 1  revealed that we had different backgrounds in terms of our role in education and our experience of open learning and of problem based learning (PBL).

Unit 2 Introduction to FDOL 

We decided to have a hangout (simple online tool provided by Google+) to meet and discuss how we would like to collaborate during the course.  

Our hangout gave us chance to meet face to face. This tells us that online or distance learning doesn't have to be isolating.  

We identified that some members of the group had no experience of PBL as a participant or as a facilitator and so it seemed appropriate to propose that we should hold a pilot PBL session, using this as a trigger.  We suggested that this would help to prepare us for the forthcoming PBL in units 3-5.

We chose to open a simultaneous thread to use as our discussion space for the pilot  FDOL 131 Group 1 Pilot  

We are FDOL 131 Group 1, 
welcome to our blog....


We are, Joanne Ashworth and Neil Withnell from the University of Salford UK and Lars Ohrmalm and Aida Wahlgren from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.  Chrissi Nerantzi, our facilitator is an academic developer at the University of Salford.


This blog has been created as a method of sharing our experiences as we engage in an online course outlined here, 

FDOL wordpress - what its all about

Aims

• to promote learners’ critical engagement with key theoretical principles and perspectives, current issues and relevant technologies related to flexible, distance and online learning in .
• to develop learners’ understanding and critical reflection on online learning, through active engagement in online cross-cultural experiences.
• to develop relevant online skills and examine germane approaches to enable and enhance creative and contemporary learning experiences for student learning within their own professional context.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding of

1. Review principles, processes, benefits and challenges in online collaborative distance and flexible learning in higher education
2. Evaluate models and strategies to support online learning in cross-cultural contexts
3. Demonstrate critical awareness of benefits and challenges of open practices in own professional context