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!
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