Posts

Lessons learnt – future practice

I have learnt quite a lot during the ONL course that I've been following for the past couple of months. I have learnt more about digital tools than I expected and I've had the opportunity to test several different tools. However, I don't see myself using them so much during my teaching, since my teaching is mostly not of that kind. They are, however, very useful in workshops, group work and other collaborative environments. I could let my students use e.g. Miro or Mural for some project work but since we do not have a license for this, I'm a bit reluctant. These would have been nice tools for them to have though. Now I think that I'll suggest using Office 365 och Google Docs along with Zoom. And I hope that LTU will get licenses for these kind of tools in the future, now that we're doing it all online. These last few months, I've realised that breakout rooms in Zoom is also a really nice tool for collaboration, both temporary and more permanent since you can

Design for online and blended learning

The five stage-model (Salmon, 2020) does not work directly in my courses since none of them have an important social component. Of course there is a social aspect to all learning, but the social part in physics is sort of in the back seat. However, I agree with the first two parts. It's important to clearly present to the students how the course is structured; where they can find the information and what is expected of them. This is something that I always go through during the first lecture and it's even more important to do so in a digital context. For example, I always walk them through the Canvas-room (Canvas is our learning platform). I show them where everything is and I open the documents so they have seen them as well. The socialising part is generally not necessary in my courses since the students generally know each other since they are in the same study program. Also in the bigger courses, the students are generally divided in groups with respect to their program so

Learning in communities – networked collaborative learning

PLN means Personal/Professional/Passionate Learning Network (Oddone, 2019). For me Professional makes the most sense since this is a professional activity, though I can also see the merits of Personal since it's me as a person how is engaged in this. Every discussion about pedagogy is really simultaneously a collaborative learning and part of a PLN. Most of my PLN is local and face to face. I discuss pedagogy with my colleagues in physics at the department, Nils, Magnus, Andreas and Corina. At the division level I talk to Marcus, Lars, Mikael and Petter. At the department level I discuss a lot with Niklas and as a PL (Pedagogical Leader at LTU), I discuss with Oskar, Janne, Malin, Karin, the other PL's: Olle, Inger, Susanne, Diana, Björn and Andreas. These networks are somewhere betwen communities and networks. We share common goals but we still work largely individually. Then there are also pedagogy conferences, both internal at LTU and external. I am currently following two o

Sharing and Openness

The video about creative licences was informative (Process Arts, 2011) to sort out how to make sure that my online material won't be used in a manner that I didn't intend. However, I'm not so concerned about getting credit so I'd probably just the CC0 licence (Creative Commons, 2020). If anyone use my material, it's nice, but they don't need to attribute it to me, unless it'd be something that I make money on myself. Of course, I can also use the creative licences for my own teaching, for example by using Flickr (2020). I disagree with Wiley (2010) who insinuates that selfishness is the reason why teachers don't share more than they do. At the very least, it isn't personal selfishness. We teachers have a responsibility towards both our universities and the creators of textbooks that we use. I agree with him that expertise and expression of expertise can be freely shared but that seems quite obvious to me. I have lived almost my whole life in a digita

How do I teach Digital Natives?

I thought of myself as a digital native but after reading Prensky 2001, I realised that I'm a mix between the old and the new. I've lived with digital content all my life, I generally prefer it to hardware content, but I do not have the social networking, nor the love of videos of the digital natives. This became very clear to me when I chose to read the article, rather than watching the videos as my first way of learning about this. First of all, I do not believe that the students are so fundamentally different today than some 30 years ago. There are two differences that I've seen, both related to reading. The first is the reluctance to read the course literature. Many students prefer to learn by following a tutorial instead of reading the book. The second concerns a laboratory instruction that I’ve worked quite a lot on and that I believe to be quite clear. Recently, however, I’ve had many questions regarding this. At first I thought that the students had simply been too

Bloggs of teaching colleagues

LTU   Susanne Westman   https://digitallearningprocesses.wordpress.com/blog Andreas Eitzenberger https://ateacherslearning19976634.wordpress.com Olle Hage https://ollesblog752860582.wordpress.com/blog Diana Chroneer https://dianacslearningblog.wordpress.com Björn Hällis https://bjornhallis.wordpress.com/blog Inger Jacobson https://rptinger.wordpress.com     ONL   Kinaz Al Aytouni   Mohit Gupta https://mohitgupta212695195.wordpress.com/ Vigdis Ahnfelt https://sola.kau.se/onl202pbl6vigdis Marcus Stensmyr https://grendelsdad.blogspot.com/ Victor Hugo Souza https://vhosouza.github.io/post/ Stephanie Birkner   Hui Chen https://blog

My digital identity

I've had a computer since 1989. First it was all about playing but after a few year I got interested in programming. First I wrote my own games, though to be fair, they were never that great. However, I learnt the basics of programming, which would prove quite useful later. When I started university I learnt about Linux and I started scripting different tools, and setting up my own web page . A couple of years later I set up my own web and mail server on my Linux computer. I also coded my own photo server and an information server for storing notes, links, files, contacts and mails online. Since I became lecturer at Luleå University of Technology  in 2008, my focus has been on making the teaching, and administration thereof, more efficient. I'm examiner of a course, Physics 3 , with about 500 students each year so automation is clearly desirable. Our learning platform at the time was Fronter but there was no good tool in Fronter for online exercises of engineering problems, so