First post-campus-week

I am in the middle of the first week of teaching in Mannheim after the Bergen experience, and I am using some of the stuff right now in my courses. First thing I used was google-docs. it is so easy, really! one thing I already used in my courses is the internet and a website with a download section, where I uploaded materials my students need. for example time schedules. the process up to now was as follows: make the schedule with word, convert to pdf, upload to my site, give a name. when there was something to chance (for example because of a change of a topic on a specific date) I had to do it all one more time: correct word document, create pdf, delete old version on my site, upload new version, give name. now I make this with a google-doc, and "share" as a website, insert the link to the website on my site, and that´s it! every time something changes I just modify the google-document, and everything is up to date! really cool :-)

another thing: yesterday in a seminar I used a film as a trigger. and this time I "forced" the students to reflect on the film sequence, not only "watch and relax and one comment thereafter". it was productive, even if they were a little bit reluctant, but that was to be expected, because they are not used to it. It works, and I will keep on working with those modifications. we will see!

Learning Objectives and Study-Plan for Alexander Noyon

You can see my learning objectives for the whole e-pedagogy-course here. (Sorry, but the table didn´t fit into the blog window, therefore external). I hope it is clear!

Evaluation of the campus week 2009

As I wrote in my mail to my teachers and my fellows, the week in Bergen was a great experience. I think it was nothing less than a change of perspective, an enrichtment of teaching philosophy. I wrote it in my last blog entry: the topics we studied in Bergen for me were not only about e-teaching, but about teaching in general.

Three things I liked best during this week:

• All these new tools! As I already said I consider myself to be indeed advanced in using computers. But now I know so much more about useful tools the electronic world has to offer. There are a lot of things I want to change in the near future, and I hope that some of the tools I utilized in this week will simplify and/or enhance my work.
• The warm and familiar atmosphere. Like in most other human beings my wellbeing depends on the quality of the relationships I have, and in this week I was surrounded by so really nice people! We had exactly the right blend of workload and concentration on the one hand and merry mood and informality on the other. That helped me a lot.
• Enough time for hands-on training. It was so important to be able to practice all these new tools we learned about, and fortunately we had time to “play” with the computer. I always need this time and it doesn’t work for me if I am guided at every step of the way without being able to practice on my own.

There would be more things to say what I liked, but I think most of this was already done in my previous blog entries.
So now my ideas for possible improvements:

• Like I already said during the course a few things were not so transparent in advance. For example Task 3. I don’t think that it is coincidence that none of us did this task properly. Mark and me didn’t do it at all. And in my case that was not because of lack of time or willingness, it was just because I didn’t know what to do. When I read the task description now I understand what to do, but I wasn’t able to understand that before the course. I think if you are not familiar with e-learning in general or it´s learning in special, you need more specific guidance in order to be able to do the task (i.e. giving an example how the product should look). Another point of lacking transparency: even if the material was in it´s learning, in advance I didn’t grasp the amount of work ahead of me, and this not only in the campus week, but also in the following weeks. It is just the same: as a complete novice it doesn’t help so much that the information is available in it´s learning, because I wasn’t familiar enough with it to really understand the meaning. For me it would have been clearer and easier to understand to receive this information in a medium I am more familiar with: easiest would have been a letter with a exact description of what is going to happen. “You are member of a course now with 10 ECTS. That consists of a campus week… and following weeks of work on several tasks…”. Even if the information was available in it´s learning, I wasn’t able to access and understand it, because of my novice status.
• For me the idea of screen lectures is very very interesting. I think this is an important tool in e-teaching. For me it would have been a good idea to see more about screen lectures (i.e. available tools), and ideal would have been the possibility to make a screen lecture myself. But I understand that this is not possible without better preparation. Perhaps that would be possible: all of us had an idea what to develop as an e-course for virclass. How about a preparation task (very transparently described :-)): “watch one of the existing screen lectures (best the one by you, anne Karin, “introduction to the epedagogy-course), prepare a text that could serve as basis for a screen lecture of you on the topic you want to develop as an e-course, and be prepared to practice this making of a screen lecture during the campus week”.
• A change of hotel would be a big improvement, even if this has nothing to do with the course itself. Very good about this hotel was the free internet access, but that´s about it. If possible it should be nearer to the College, not so noisy, and a raise of standard wouldn’t be bad either :-) We´ve been working very hard in these days, and I think it is no unreasonable demand to live a little bit better, even if our home universities receive somewhat higher bills.

The last task in “evaluation of the campus week” is about my expectations for my own work in the next weeks. What I want to do is to really develop my e-course of mental disorders for virclass. I have specific ideas about how to do this, and I will do my very best to meet all the tasks lying ahead of us, because my goal for the final assignment is, that my developed course will meet your standards of courses for the virclass project.

And a final comment to the teachers? You did great work, you are committed, you are engaged, and all of this helped me a lot! Thank you very much for that week!

Google-Day

As you can see above the title for this day is Google-Day. Or perhaps it should be “Jon-Day”, because the input Jon gave us about google was absolutely astonishing! In preparation for this week I made my google-account and visited google documents and played a little bit with it, but I have to admit that I was not too impressed. But Jons lecture today gave all the insight I needed to generate a thousand ideas how to use this in my teaching. More and more I realize that this whole week here is not only about e-teaching, but aswell about using e-tools in teaching anyway. As I told Anne Karin I would like it best to make a seminar for my students immediately, only to show them all these fantastic tools: google documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, vitero, blogs, flickr, youtube, google-maps (I would have liked to work with Jon for another hour or so on maps, that seemed to be really cool stuff either), it´s learning, MSN, slideshare, delicious, … I tried to give a complete list, but I am sure I left something out. Perhaps my colleagues can add what I have forgotten?

I don’t know if it´s possible to make such a seminar for the students, because at least this would be not my area, but the one of a colleague of mine. But I will ask. Another interesting idea would be to make a workshop for the colleagues, because I am pretty sure that most of them do not know about all these tools. When I am getting it right I am one of those in Mannheim most familiar with computers, but there are so many tools I have never heard of…

Ok, but enough on this topic. The first part of the day was the working session with Vitero. That was very interesting, too, but I have to admit that I was very disappointed when I realized later in the discussion with Anne Karin that we obviously wouldn’t be able to use Vitero on our own. If I understood it right we can only use vitero in relation to the Virclass or Vircamp project; but I wouldn’t be able to use it for my own courses in Mannheim, at least not without including Anne Karin as a coordinator. And this obviously cannot be a standard procedure. I surfed a little bit on the internet, and I do not exactly remember which tools Andras showed on his last slide, but I found “Moodle” (search via google, you will easily find it), and this seems to be a completely free alternative to vitero, and especially the most frequently used one worldwide. I had no time to read more on moodle, but it seems to be a complete package, similar to it´s learning, but including course rooms for online sessions like the one we had today in vitero. But please don’t blame me if I am completely wrong and moodle is useless, as I said: I had no time to check it further. But I want to say: I like those tools I can use completely on my own (like google documents or blog) very much, and the usefulness of tools like it´s learning or vitero is very limited if I have to be part of a specific program. Perhaps my courses will not fit into this program, so I am very glad that in these days we had it all: access to professional tools linked to specific programs, and hints and training on freeware tools.

Another very important topic today was the theme of “screen lectures”. Xavier gave us important insight in this material, and especially the short session inside the studio room at the media center was instructive. His “noise” concept made very much sense to me, and one of the first things I will do when I am back in Mannheim will be to search for the media center there in order to get the information I need to make screen lectures myself 

So, that’s it for the day, with a pleasant last event remaining: our dinner at half past seven. But now I have time to read a little bit, and I can assure you that my lecture will have nothing to do with e-learning, internet or teaching whatsoever! Bye!

Monday - Now I am a Teacher!

Today we began to work at 9am, half an hour earlier as the first days. There were students at the University, which completely altered the atmosphere, compared to the weekend. It was good!

As usual we reflected on our blog entries, and as I mentioned im my reflection one of the most important aspects for me was the topic of the “teacher as a guide” in Marks blog. That was very important yesterday, but I forgot to insert in in my blog. So I´m glad that Mark brought it back to my mind.

Afterwards we had a presentation related to the issue of open classroom, transparency and so on. This was very important, too, because there are altered rules if you have on the one hand no personal contact to your students or fellow teachers, and on the other hand – because so much is readable for everybody – a far greater part of openness and visibility. That links to the discussion of trust we had the day before. I think everything that was related to personal items (photo, facts about the personal life and so on) is very important in this context, because you only can trust people you know a little bit further, and adding a photo and personal stories might help a lot to build a relationship. Another notion I have right now: the topic of the style of address: it went without difficulty and totally without an explicit agreement that everybody here is personally addressed by his first name (it´s not “Mr. Wouters”, but Wim, not “Mrs. Larsen”, but Anne Karin). But when I wrote my very first mail to Anne Karin, it WAS Mrs. Larsen  because I was in my normal frame of Mannheim. There students are strictly not addressed by their first name (and they are addressed with the German “Sie”, not the “Du”, a differentiation not available in English). And among the teachers it is just the same, unless there has been an agreement; and there are rules who can initiate that agreement: the older person can propose it to the younger, not the other way around, the boss to his employee and so on. Here in Virclass/e-learning it is different. Even today, it was “Aasmund”, not “Mr. Kvamme”, even if I didn´t see him before, never have spoken to him either. Perhaps this is the Norwegian style?! I´m looking forward to Anne Karins and Grete Olines comments on this. But the point I want to make: I think this familiarity is very appropriate for e-learning, and it helps to build the relationships necessary to stay in the process.

One very “big” thing today was our promotion to teachers. First we did this on the assignment level, reading student work and teachers reactions and reflecting these teacher feedbacks and trying to develop own feedback. This was a very demanding and important task, because I think the qualitiy of the teacher feedback is of utmost importance to the students. With our feedback we can encourage the students, or frustrate them, further them, or scare them out of the program. So we have to be very careful in giving feedback, every time with our goals before our eyes, and especially in the first weeks I think the most important goal is to hold the students in the program, to encourage them, to help them to move around the barricades.

Great fun was the session with Aasmund, because he gave us real useful input about how to use it´s learning on the teacher level. He was very fast, but that was perfect for me because I am familiar with computers and I like it to get the information of “why click where” as fast as possible. But it is dangerous to be so fast in explaining the basics of a program, and as Mark said it was perhaps too fast, at least partly. And even if we do not have to explain to somebody the teacher functions, we will have very similar sessions with students, explaining to them how to use it´s learning as a student. And I think this is a crucial moment. If we are too fast at this point, the drop-out rate will go through the ceiling. The big problem: it can be expected that the students differ very strongly in their computer skills and the speed with which they are capable to absorb the information. So I think it is important to make the information available in a form that suits for everybody: for the faster and for the slower ones just the same.

It was a very hard day today, and I´m happy to really call it a day now, except the comments to my fellows blogs. See you tomorrow, have a nice evening, good dinner, and sleep well!

The Sunday - reflecting several reflections...

The first work in the morning was the reflection of our blog-reflections. I had no time and energy to read Wims blog-entry yesterday, and it was interesting to read it today in the morning (unfortunately Marks blog was not open, but we managed that problem later). It was interesting to see the others perspectives on what we have done so far. Especially interesting was Wims entry in his blog that he is happy to have me in the course as a person giving theoretical input. I can see that perspective now, but it was not obvious for me in advance. That is an important perspective: our mulitdisciplinarity gives us good opportunity to combine theory and practice, and to experience the possibilities in relation to e-teaching and learning. 

One of the most important parts of learning today was “reflecting reflection”. Anne Karin made a presentation related to this topic, and we had an interesting discussion. I think that reflection is one of the most important aspects of active learning. Reflection initiated from the outside is guided by questions. and this is what we are doing here all the time: we are not only absorbing knowledge and facts, but we are questioned (and questioning) time and time again. What I now think about this is: on the one hand this is a little bit “irksome” sometimes J, but on the other hand it helps to pick every grain of potential out of a specific learning task. When I reflect now on my teaching “at home”, I think that I lose much of the potential that lies in my presentations, in our discussions, in the literature I give to the students and so on, because often I do not ask the right questions or give the right tasks to activate the students to work with the material. So I help them to stay in a passive mode, and it would be much better – even if more exhausting – to change into an active mode. I think it is a very important task for e-learning to find the balance between passive learning – not so exhaustive – and active learning – much more demanding. Anne Karin today displayed data on the rates showing how many students finished the e-learning-courses; and she showed data citing the students saying “It was much more demanding than I had thought”. I think this is one of the problems of e-learning: the students build their expectations concerning the energy they will need on their normal learning experience. But e-learning is much more demanding than “classic learning”. So it is very important to communicate exactly what lies ahead of the students, in order to help them building correct expectations.

Today we had a great deal of time to “play” with the computer and it´s learning, and I think that was absolutely necessary! I feel much better now with using it´s learning and its different features and options. It helped very much to be able to take a look on another screen or to ask a direct question to Anne Karin or Grete Oline. Now I need to practice in order not to forget where the important buttons are J

The last learning item of the day was our “group work” with three groups of n=1 persons. It was a very interesting task, showing the potential in different forms of presentation materials. That too gave me good ideas not only for e-teaching, but also for classroom teaching.

So, all in all another very interesting day, which was crowned by the trip of the afternoon and evening. I found the film of those two siblings leading their life on the farm so interesting. No electricity, no machines, no running water… it´s such a contrast to our lives, unimaginable. Especially right now, sitting in front of my computer and being linked to the whole world via internet, and that even without a cable!

But for today now it is enough, now a good reading, and then a good sleep! 

First Day of Work in Bergen!

Today was the first day in Norway, working with Anne Karin and Grete Oline on e-learing. The starting conditions were just great: Bergen showing itself from its sunniest side, a really pleasant walk with Mark and Wim from the hotel to Bergen University College, and right on schedule starting to learn about e-learning at 9.30 a.m.

 

The first task was the presentation of a plan for the course we want to develop for e-learning. It was very interesting to hear about and discuss the projects of the colleagues, because it was the first experience of a point so special about Virclass: the joining of professionals from different countries and the possibility to discuss themes from very different viewpoints – not only different professional disciplines, but also different countries. We didn´t go into too much detail on our specific themes, but it was enough to give an idea of the potential of cross-cultural discussion.

 

Before and after this – I can´t remember the exact series of events – it was also very interesting to solve several technical problems and to have insight in special oddities of e-learning. For me one of the most interesting was that I obviously had not understood task 3 - a note about my learning objectives and expectations for the course and a time schedule for this course - , which all of us should have completed for the work here. Wim was the only one who finished this task, and I have to admit that I simply misunderstood. I think this can happen really fast in e-learning: only reading without feedback and correction is faulty, and I really think I´m good in understanding written language J I think it is really very important to be as clear and precise as possible, and when I read Anne Karins task-description now I can see that it is clear and precise, but I misunderstood nevertheless. So what I learn: in e-learning we will have to find ways to raise feedback on all the important tasks and as a teacher never be too sure that everybody has understood correctly what to do.

 

I think one of most important insights for me today was that e-teaching has to differ completely from my teaching practice so far. My plan was to have weekly sessions with my students, similar to my lectures at University, to give them the appropriate input. It is so obvious now: that would never work. As Anne Karin emphasized: an screen lecture of more than 10 minutes is a lecture never watched J and an online lecture/discussion with all participants is simply unrealistic, never achievable. So I will have to adopt completely new strategies. The biggest part of our related discussion today was concerned with the topic “responsibility”, and I now realize that it is absolutely important to address the students and their responsibility for their own learning process. What we need are the right questions and the right tasks to initiate and stimulate self-regulated learning. I have first ideas of this, but not more and especially not enough. So I´m looking forward to the next days and ideas to solve this concrete issue!

My Course on Virclass

Tomorrow the fun begins. I´ll be leaving Germany at 9.45 pm. Here the weather is perfect, so it is not the perfect time to go to Norways most rainy city...

My course for Virclass will be about "Mental Disorders", and I hope this will be of interest to our students!

About Blogging as a Learning Tool

Today I watched Jill Rettbergs video about "Blogging as a Tool for Reflection and Learning", and I can strongly recommend to watch that video! I have to admit: when I first read on the virclass-site that I should open a blog on blogger.com I was very sceptical about the sense of a blog in a learning environment. But after watching Jills video I´m convinced of the purpose of blogging! Visit her blog on http://jilltxt.net/, it´s really interesting!