Open and blended learning

Topic 4 Design for open and blended learning

 At this point i have learned so much and been showed lots of different digital tools that one can use in education. One thing bothered me with this topic and its the name of the topic open and blended learning, to me open and blended is hard to achieve, these networks to me are strictly put together by ones own personal taste - to me that means that i might not be challenged in a way that I might need to be. Open and blended should be like snowball effect and might be hard to accomplice when a course is set from ones own perspective.

Then I started reading the articles and exploring the subject a bit further, open and blended can also mean that i allow myself to be open, be sharing and invite new thoughts and persons into my network. Which would lead to a blended learning network. I also think that being engaged in this process of the ONL212 has achieved just that for me - I meet whit new people that I probably wouldn't have meet if I didn't attend this course and not only meet - I found a different perspective through the help of my blended learning network. Before I sought knowledge or even ideas in the same area, this course have helped me to be able to seek knowledge in other fields and areas that have a different perspective on education which have helped a lot.

Before exploring the pitfalls of PLN I want to established the gains in a course of using distance education and collaborations online. Allen et al. (2002) established that although the students had expressed a slightly higher level of satisfaction with live courses due to the heterogeneous set of correlations. when looking into the different correlations it came clearer that after removing the outlines the results showed homogeneity. In the results it also where established that some students even favoring distance education and collaborations. In the study Allen et al. found that when setting up a course, teacher has to see to the students and aims of the course and be flexible in offering ways to attend the course if wanting to achieve the goal for the course. In Gagnon et al. (2013) study they took it a step further by doing an intervention and trying to explore if there could be a difference between traditional learning and online learning. In the intervention the group was divided into two and the intervention group where given access to 11 interactive internet based modules for self studies on top of that they had five traditional classrooms sessions. The other group where instructed using traditional methods in 13 classrooms sessions. Out of the 112 student (56 in each group) 52 students from the intervention completed the final exam and 50 from the control group. Using three variables to examining the result Gagnon et al. found that students did not different i results so knowledge variable did not differ in between the two groups. The second variable motivation was showing a significant difference between unmotivated students in the intervention group and the traditional group. In the intervention group expressed a higher level of motivation after finishing the course then the unmotivated students in the traditional group. Also a when looking at both exams separately it was established that the intervention group scored significant higher on the midterm exam than the traditional group. The last variable was satisfaction and this variable showed no difference in between the groups. 

Looking at collaborations in a network the main ingredient seems to be frustration and I believe this is true for most collaboration even them in IRL (Rigg &Mahoney, 2011). According to Capdeferro and Romero (2012) frustration is always existing in some form when performing collaborations online. By understanding how and why frustration occurs some of the frustration can be minimized but excluding it completely would hurt the working process, since it is the ignition that keeps the group striving towards an aim. When collaborations is planned and has a pedagogical aim it can strive and achieve goals such as - critical thinking, co-creations of knowledge and meaning, inspire reflection and can turn into a trans-formative learning (Palloff & Pratt, 2005). 

To sum it all up - to learn in a open and blended network and to believe that you have to be reflective on what the aim is whit the PLN, what you want to learn ore share, how flexible you want to be and how much you want to challenge yourself.

Reference:

Allen, M., Bourhis, J., Burrell, N. & Mabry, E. (2002). Comparing Student Satisfaction With Distance Education to Traditional Classrooms in Higher Education: A Meta- Analysis. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(2), 83-97. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1602_3

Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are Online Learners Frustrated with Collaborative Learning Experiences? The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(2), 26-44. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i2.1127 

Gagnon, Marie-Pierre, Johanne Gagnon, Marie Desmartis, and Merlin Njoya. 2013. "The impact of blended teaching on knowledge, satisfaction, and self-directed learning in nursing undergraduates: a randomized, controlled trial."  Nursing education perspectives 34 (6):377-82. doi: 10.5480/10-459

Rigg, C. & O´Mahony, N. (2011). Frustrations in Collaborative Working - insights from institutional theory. Public Management Review, 15(1), 83-108. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2012.686231