Karin Levinsen

Qualifying online teachers--Communicative skills and their impact on e-learning quality

Worldwide there is an increasing demand for educational institutions to offer part of their educations online and mixed mode. For institutions to comply with these demands, it is necessary to prepare teachers (and other members of the staff), to fulfil their responsibilities within the virtual environment. Teachers must be able to organize their courses pedagogically according to different conditions, i.e., subject domains, group sizes, variations within communication and interaction. Teachers must acquire knowledge and skills in handling Information and Communication Techniques (ICT) as well as pedagogical possibilities and constraints inherited in the software available. Several studies demonstrate that technical obstacles are easier to overcome than lack of communication skills. Also the consequenses of communication breakdowns tend to create serious problems that technology cannot solve. These problems concern how teachers function satisfactory as mediators and coaches in collaborative, knowledge sharing virtual environments. For example, how teachers support their students in becoming online-students and how they facilitate complex discussions on difficult topics. This is a big challenge for everybody involved in e-learning, and the challenge is not met by offering introductory courses for university teachers. Based on basis of a recent examination of concrete actions and strategies for the future within 11 Danish universities, the auther argues that there exists a severe mismatch between the organisational expectations and strategies and the competence-evolving activities that the same organisations offer to their staff. A recent case study of a university pedagogy course on e-learning for university teachers demonstrates and identifies some of the consequences of the mismatch. Finally the author suggests strategies to meet the demands of the future online university.

Effective use of ICT for inclusive learning of young children with reading and writing difficulties

Due to a range of social and economic factors, Australian institutions have struggled to meet the demand for highly trained professionals for the minerals industry in recent years. In order to address this issue, Mining Education Australia, a consortia of four of Australias mining schools was established to develop and deliver a common curriculum for mining engineering education. The use of technology to support the delivery of this common curriculum is integral to the success of this initiative. This chapter outlines the challenges in such collaborations and discusses the range of corporate and open source technologies selected and adopted to overcome these challenges to enable collaborative teaching and learning activities in this trans-national program.

Innovating Design for Learning in the Networked Society

The transition from the industrial to the knowledge or networked society has, together with the worldwide digitalization and e-permeation of our social, political and economic lives, brought challenges to the educational systems. The changes call for new key competences in terms of self-initiated and lifelong learning and digital literacy. At the same time, the implementation of new public management in educational institutions put pressure on students’ available time for studying and the qualitative outcome of learning processes. These conditions give birth to emerging tensions at the organizational level between effectiveness, quality and summative evaluation and at the individual level between personal cost-benefit-based choices of study approach and the demands for study activities related to problem-based project pedagogy within a (social) constructivist paradigm. What the authors meet in their practice are students who are (if at all) only familiar with the curriculum at a surface level and who expect the teachers to present digested versions of the curriculum. This chapter presents a design for teaching and learning approach in the shape of a design for learning model that aims to scaffold students’ self-initiated and reflective study practice that matches learning in the networked society and at the same time bypasses the consequences of the emerging tensions in the learning context. We believe that the model can be operationalized various specific educational activities.

Formalized Informal Learning: ICT and Learning for the 21st Century

Longitudinal research projects into social practices are both subject to and capture changes in society, meaning that research is conducted in a fluid context and that new research questions appear during the project’s life cycle. In the present study emerging new performances and uses of ICT are examined and the relation between network society competences, learners’ informal learning strategies and ICT in formalized school settings over time is studied. The authors find that aspects of ICT like multimodality, intuitive interaction design and instant feedback invites an informal bricoleur approach. When integrated into certain designs for teaching and learning, this allows for Formalized Informal Learning and support is found for network society competences building.

Substituting ICT as a Lever for Inclusion of Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties

This paper presents research findings from a 3-year development and research project named Project IT-folder PIF that aimed at the inclusion of young children with potential reading and writing difficulties into normal classes in a suburb of the Danish capital. The project ran from 2007 to June 2010 as collaboration between the Danish University School of Education, the local municipality government, the Pedagogic Development Centre and two primary schools in the municipality. The aim of the project was to produce research-based knowledge that grounds and consolidates a future-oriented and sustainable implementation strategy and practice for all schools in the municipality regarding ICT as a change agent. The projects methodology was designed as research-based interventions into everyday practice, while data was collected through qualitative and anthropological methods, collection of student work and school assessment measures. PIF has succeeded in producing a series of interventions ranging from everyday practices over competence building for teachers to organisational changes in the single school and at the municipality level. These interventions are at present being implemented in the municipality.

Embedding complementarity in HCI methods and techniques: Designing for the "cultural other"

Differences in cultural contexts constitute differences in cognition and research, which shows that different cultures may use different cognitive tools for perception and reasoning. The cultural embeddings are significant in relation to HCI, because the cultural context is also embedded in the methodological framework, the techniques and the tools that we apply. We lack a framework for discussing what and who we are, when we talk about a person as the user of an ICT system that has to be designed, developed and implemented. As a framework, we will suggest a theory of complementary positions that insists on solid accounts from all observer positions in relation to perspective, standpoint and focus. We need to develop complementary theories that embed complexity, and we need to reflect critically upon the forty years dominated by a rationalistic, empirical understanding of the user as illustrated in the literature and practice within the HCI paradigm in system development.