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Learning in Communities

Learning in communities is of course nothing new. Nevertheless it may be a very efficient way of learning [1].  First, learning in a community is fun ! One gets to share the knowledge, clear misconceptions and gain deeper understanding through discussions.  A good example of learning together is our ability to solve the Covid-19 virus spread together; together as the whole world. Learning together will increase our social network or personal learning network (PLN) [2,3]. This will increase the ability to work together with people from various backgrounds and one learns various perspectives to the same topic from course mates. This creates a greater awareness for the learning process. Also, if help is needed, is will be close. The course mates are probably able to help. Furthermore, arguing together will increase skills to a higher level. There are also ways to make the joint effort easier as many times there are also some challenges in working in a group (cooperation vs collaboration).
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Blended learning

Blended learning is mixed up in my mind into active learning. By active learning, I understand giving the students something 'more' than teacher talking alone for 1.5 hours. But blended learning (BL) is actually about blending face-to-face and online teaching. Then, what is face-to-face ? One could think that it is only physical meetings but it is actually also online meetings with faces showing to the participants. This is the bit confusing part. Clearly, we have a connection to the concepts of synchronous and asynchronous learning within blended learning. This means that are we learning at the same time  or not. Here, things get confusing if we start to assume that we may have face-to-face learning that is also asynchronous ... ? Can we ? The term COI (Community of Inquiry) pops up here and there when diving into BL. The meaning of it is many times made too complex by using 'scientific language'. As Cleveland-Innes [1] nicely puts it, COI can be viewed simply as '
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Open learning, part 2

I am focusing now on three topics within open learning, namely 1) what is it, 2) how to assess it, and 3) the knowledge transfer.  Open I am thinking what does open learning mean. I mean the open -part there. Typically open courses are not open to everyone. So open does not mean that the courses would be open to the whole world. Also, there might be restrictions on the number of students allowed to an open course. This can be e.g. on the basis of total participants or based on allowed participants per institution. Typically the courses are free of charge but if one wants to have a certificate, then it is many times not anymore free. So perhaps in the end, open learning is somehow pointing towards interactive learning; learning from each other -type of courses and teaching. So, should we actually talk about social learning ? Assessment It is a known fact that in courses where the assessment is based on the performance of groups of students as opposed to individual students, it is easier
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Open learning

 It is about distress. I notice that the topics within the course are new to me and this leads to distress. My initial way of dealing with new, possibly difficult, topics is yes, distress. I feel that it is kind of strange that these topics are new to me, say open learning or digital literacy for that matter. It is strange because I have been teaching for more than 10 years. But better now than never.  I is about confusion. This comes from the lack of clear structure. I am used to having courses or teaching courses which have lectures and then there are learning exercises that are completed mostly independently. Now lectures are no more. But we have instead a group of people discussing on a topic. Nobody says that you should now read this article or this book. For me this is equal to confusion: from very clear rules to large freedom with a lot of choices.  It is about learning. I knew not even the word 'digital literacy' before. Now, yes, I think I have a clue of its meaning. O
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Digital literacy: What ?

 I can certainly relate to the scenario given to us: finding things is difficult and the topic seems incomprehensible. The enthusiasm has turned into confusion. I do not even seem to understand the topic (digital literacy) nor the connection to my teaching. I need to actually read the manual now. After seeing David White's seminar, thoughts are starting to form up: where is the beef. How is this connected to my teaching. But also Resident - Visitor, interesting  ! Looking more D. White from the tube. Digital native vs older people. If you are born with it, you are digitally literate, right ? Or is it more about our motivation to engage ? Somehow the connection between teaching and digital literacy is starting to emerge. More and more 'everything' is online. So perhaps it is important to understand, first, what is my digital literacy.  On the other hand, and looking back, I have not really encountered that students would be much more 'digitally literate' than I am as
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 Hi, just starting now the blogging for the 1st time.  Some things in the course are at the moment a bit unclear (like what to do for the next meeting) but on the other hand the support is good and I am confident that things will clear out well. Ending my 1st blog here :) Ossi 
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