In 2014 I decided together with a colleague to create an online-course aimed at strengthening active music teachers in their role as material-creators e.g. creating their own backingtracks and sheet music and also being able to record themselves and their students with a DAW (digital audio workstation). This was my first attempt at creating a course entirely online and although the course ran for three years with many applicants each year, we decided to shut it down. One of the reasons for this was student completion (or lack thereof). We discussed possible reasons for this for some time and then went on to other things, but have now due to Covid and the need for more online learning decided to give this course another go, only this time we will need to restructure everything, split it up into multiple courses and learn from our mistakes.
The “easy” explanations for our failure (yes, I see it as that) were in the beginning the software and the digital platforms: “Adobe connect is useless, Fronter won’t let students work with big files etc.” but the more I learn about networked learning, learning in communities, PBL, constructive alignment, community of inquiry etc., the more I realize we need to totally reconstruct our earlier attempts.
During Topic 4 While reading through In the Community of Inquiry Blended Learning Evaluation (Cleveland-Innes, M. & Wilton, D. (2018) I reflected over several of the statements in the evaluation and applied them to our earlier attempt at online courses. These stood out as aspects that were non-existent:
- My actions reinforce the development of a sense of community among course participants.
- I acknowledge emotion expressed by the students in my course.
- Students in my course are able to form distinct impressions of some other course participants.
- Students feel comfortable interacting with other course participants.
- Getting to know other course participants gives students a sense of belonging in my course.
- Emotion is expressed, online or face to face, among the students in my course.
Long story short, we had 80 students sitting by themselves with no contact between each other watching tutorial-videos made by us (most of which in a monotone and serious voice) and doing tasks independently and asynchronous. Zero sence of community and student engagement through emotional interaction.
This fall with everything I’ve participated in, from being a mentor in LTU:s Qualifying course for university teachers which is part of a development program (PNL), to participating in ONL-202 has inspired me and forced me to have a good look in the mirror regarding what I do and how I go about doing it. …like some sort of a reboot.
Resources
Cleveland-Innes, M. & Wilton, D. (2018). Guide to Blended Learning. Burnaby: Commonwealth of Learning. Appendix 1. p.74-77.
Björn Hällis ONL blog 
Dear Björn, Thank you for a dramatic, honest and sincere blog post. You show in an elegant way how you can analyse your own course in relation to pedagogical frameworks. The situation you present reminds me of a situation several years ago when I read through some of the comments in a course evaluation for a course I was involved with during the same time I was reading pedagogical literature. I became so painfully aware of the shortcomings in my design of some of the components in the course. But this is what it is all about when being exposed to educational literature – you slowly develop an extended toolbox consisting of new perspectives, models and frameworks that helps you to put both yourself and the design of teaching and learning processes in a new light. Sometimes it’s just refreshingly wonderful – sometimes it is painful. I am not sure if you have experienced your new perspectives on your old course in either of these ways, but no matter what, it is wonderful to read your reflection about what you now see, by doing this analysis. I think that what you have done in this blog post could be seen as a part of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/sotl/what-is-sotl Thank you for sharing – it was a pleasure to read! I am looking forward to your next post!
GillaGilla
Nice reflection about your evaluation of a failure that seems to have evoked new thoughts about teaching/learning online.
Those aspects you identified as non-existent in your online course are similar to the aspects I identified to be missing in my own courses when I run them online. The aspects are present to various degrees when I teach in the classroom but completely disappear when I teach online. In the classroom (out in the field and in the lab) emotions are shared and we rejoice when we succeed and encourage each other when we fail. Online there are black windows with students’ names and hardly anyone answers questions or wants to discuss (unless there are questions about the assessment). And as you say, it’s easier to blame other factors such as technology, students, the LMS, etc, than the teaching/learning environment you create. Personally I will use Salmons (2013) five stage model along with the provided CoI checklist (Appendix 1 in your reference) as a base when I redo parts of my course that thanks to Covid-19 will run online instead of at campus. The good thing is that thanks to what I encountered in the ONL course as well as the LTU:s Qualifying courses for university teachers, whatever I chose to do, it can’t do worse than I have done previously when teaching online. Still, I’m a bit nervous on how the students will receive these changes.
I wish you luck with your reboot and hope you will share what you learn along the way!
Please note that your link in the reference is not a complete link (half of it is not part of the link) and therefore redirects you to a useless page.
GillaGillad av 1 person
Thank you for your thoughts and comments and the heads up regarding the link! Fixed it.
GillaGillad av 1 person
Interesting that you share your individual experience! I agree with your reflection on the constructive alignment. About the ”reboot” you’re mentioning: We’ve all more or less been in a similar reboot in the era of digitalization. Definitely more to learn for all of us 🙂
GillaGilla