KAJO – Flexible Blended Learning in Science of Education

E-xcellence seminar, Oulu 19.5.2009Eetu Pikkarainen

Background• General decline of student amounts in educational open university studies in Finland

Development requirements• Old model is of good quality but expensive,

inflexible and heavy:• Maintaining and bettering of quality level• Increase of flexibility• Decrease of spending of resources

An Old Aim

• ”To search and invent such a procedure that the work of student would minimise, but students should still learn more…(Comenius)”

Development goals• Develop a total model for teaching and studies in

province –and utilise it then in other teaching and studies

• Clarify the role of the collaborating provincial educational institutes (learning centres).

• Maintain the correspondence of content and demand level of studies in relation to degree programmes.

The nature of development

• Tradition respecting, pragmatic, short steps project.

• The whole area of action: administration, collaboration, marketing, etc.

• Learning and teaching in the focus.

Operations model of the project

• Open university is buying the teaching and its development from the department.

• Phased 3 year project: 1. general studies programme (25 ects)

2. subject studies programme (35 ects)

• Project group: teachers developing their courses (part time), team work, stake holders

Pedagogical base

• Theoretical clarity and scope as starting points

• Theory of pedagogical action (Benner, Kivelä, Siljander)

• Pedagogical paradox: not teacher centred nor student centred model

Pedagogical relationship and didactical triangle

1) contents

2) teaching

3) studying

Learning methods

• Contents -> Teaching -> Studying -> Learning

• Learning requires student’s action, theoretical work: study: interrogation (inquiry)

• Teaching promotes and directs this action towards the contents

”Building blocks”• Curriculum

– Materials

• Teacher– Responsibility– Material– Lectures – Leaning tasks– Assessment

• Tutor– Leaning tasks– Discussions

• Student– Tasks, Discussion,– Feedback

• VLE– Tasks, discussions,

links, archive,

Contents

Courses

Programmes

Science of education

Pedagogical thinking

Education

Culture

Curriculum

• Starting from wholes (programmes) – content centred

• Especially the general studies are the general knowledge basis in all our degree programs of education

• Core content analyses

Programme model3. Applying phase2. Content phase1. Orienting

phase

Introductory course (s)

Subject area

courses

Small research thesis

seminars

Teacher

• Teacher (researcher) is responsible of the whole course, the special learning material and assessment of students learning.

• Lecture as a traditional core of course.– Partly face to face, partly via ACP (good

experiences!)– Partly to material

Tutor• Students often have no experience in university studies. • Aim:

– Local process / group tutors in the institutes– Course-specific content tutors (Important!)

• Near collaboration with teachers• Active interaction with students• Mediating between students and teachers• Tutor training

Learning material

• Teachers write material around their lecture notes.

• Recorded lecture snippets linked to material.

• http://apumatti.oulu.fi/apumatti/lcms.php?am=353-353-1

• Course book: part of university studies.

Learning tasks• Aim is to shorten the pedagogical cycle• Essays and exams • Mid exams• Revision tests • Peer referencing of essays / theses.• Forced attending to discussions. • Polls• Questions

VLE

• (Virtual learning environment)

• 1: Channel of interaction

• 2: Platform of tasks

• Discussion and information archive

• Hopes: integration to email, assessment of all kind of tasks, collecting assessments, peer referee functions, etc.

Course structure example• Orientation and tuning task (VLE)• Learning material• Lecture (f2f)• Questions from students to teacher (VLE)• Lecture (ACP)• Mid tasks, discussions• Revision task• Essay / exam • Feedback

QA and feedback system• Feedback as general education goal:

– Beginning, mid and end questionnaires (webropol)– Course-specific feedback boxes (VLE)– Tutor feedback– Teacher feedback– Collected reports yearly -> planning

• Quality assessment by E-xcellence tools• Process modelling• Connection to University QA

Applying

• Utilising in campus and degree programme.

• Bigger groups• Common material.• Similar tasks.• Part of lectures to tutoring / discussion• Tutoring practice in degree programmes.• Unifying of QA and development.

Problems

• Technological-administrational restrictions (VLE)

• Student groups (Group support, Social media)

• Research should be made

Thank you!

Comments and questions!?

eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi