The #DigitalScholar course of Reda Sadki introduced me to Bill Copes and Mary Kalantzis. The Copes & Kalantzis MOOC on Coursera elearning Ecologies was running then at the same time but I had my hands full with #DigitalScholar so I wasn’t able to concentrate on the MOOC. So I’m trying this MOOC now.
The assignment for the first week is –
Make an update of 300 words or more introducing a ubiquitous learning concept on the e-Learning Ecologies MOOC community page in Scholar or the discussions area of Coursera. Define the concept and provide at least one example of the concept in practice. Be sure to add links or other references, and images or embedded media to illustrate your point. If possible, select a concept that nobody has addressed yet so we get a well-balanced view of ubiquitous learning.
Ubiquitous learning concepts might include: Ubiquitous computing, cloud computing, Web 2.0, the flipped classroom, blended learning, over-the-shoulder learning, virtual schools, the internet of things, mobile learning, social media learning, networked learning, informal learning, lifelong and lifewide learning, work and community-based learning, learning management systems, ePortfolios, collaborative workspaces and MOOCs.
I am currently teaching HI 201 Health Informatics in graduate school. How I teach this course is outlined in this Slideshare.
Looking at the ubiquitous learning concepts previously enumerated, I can say that my course uses Web 2.0, flipped classroom, blended learning, social media learning, learning management systems and eportfolios. To explain how I do this, take a look at the learning sequence below –
I use project-based learning in my class to make learning visible to me as the teacher. The project is a learning artifact that I can see. I set up the project for my students by posing a driving question.
To explain the driving question, I made a short video to annotate the required readings/videos/slide presentations. These resources and my videos reside in the learning management system (Moodle, which in my university is called the UVLe or University Virtual Learning Environment).
I used to have many readings listed. Though I didn’t actually expect the students to read all of them, they did tell me that they would have to do that anyway to figure out which ones are useful to help them answer the driving question. Because of that, I have since limited the required readings to three or less. If they feel these are inadequate, they can always look up more resources online. In fact I’ve incorporated some student-suggested readings into my syllabus over the years.
My class is flipped. Students engage with the learning material before coming to class. Our class meetings are reserved for students reporting on their projects, for them to gain feedback from me as their teacher, and from their classmates. My class is also an example of blended learning with some instruction taking place online within the learning management system.
I choose to make learning visible not only to myself but to others as well, online. I ask my students to blog about their project assignments. This is Web 2.0. You can read more about why I ask students to blog here. The student blog is an eportfolio that documents their learning journey in my class. I ask my students to post links to their blog entries on Facebook, specifically the Philippine Medical Informatics Society and the informatics graduate students group. In this way, they can also get feedback about their work from experts in the field and senior students/alumni of the masters program. This is social media learning. Social media supports self-regulated learning and it provides a platform to create a personal learning environment (PLE).
