This is my final post of the course, my last lullaby, my reflection sonata.

It has been an educational experience in a casual and relaxed atmosphere. Our PBL group 8 had really great facilitators (Patrik and Natalie), who kept us up to date about everything, and anything, course related. We had 100% freedom to go at things our way and I especially liked two things about our meetings: 1) we had fixed meeting times on Tuesdays and Thursdays 2) we ended meetings early if there was nothing more to discuss about. Both of these things made group work effortless, stress-free and easy.

During the course, we were given the opportunity to investigate and explore the diverse dimensions of online learning as a group. Few things that I would like to highlight are the following.

1. Support for teachers. Support is not only a “Here are the tools you can use!” chant, but best practices. Less is more, otherwise the abundance of software and hardware, and their features, is overwhelming. There should be more resources (e.g. teaching assistants not only for the course but for the preparation of the course) and time dedicated for teaching at the University level, to ensure the materials, methods are up to date and that they are continuously improved.
2. Disadvantaged students. Just last year it became mandatory for all video material at Aalto University to have subtitles to improve the accessibility for all. This is a great thing but it adds on the work of teachers, unless they are using a software that provides automatic subtitles. Again, a critical factor while choosing software, and one that might become apparent when it is too late. All disadvantaged students should be taken into account while developing teaching. More generally this means that there is a call for flexible and personalised learning and assessment. The old metaphor of “do not assess a giraffe by its ability to climb trees” holds true to this day.
3. Creativity assessment. It is vital to assess students based on their content mastery, however, creativity assessment is commonly disregarded. Creativity is difficult to assess, so there has to be efforts made towards methods that support awarding students for creativity. A gut feeling of “this feels creative” is not enough. One way would be giving points for the quantity of generated ideas to solve a problem, as higher quantity of ideas increases the probability of higher quality ideas.

That’s all folks! Thank you ONL. Thank you PBL group 8. Thanks to all participants! Have a great summer 🙂

Blended learning is a hot topic, since the post-covid world might force us to use more blended classes, where some students are present physically and others virtually (=remotely). Blended learning also means that internet tools, such as Kahoot, are applied in the classroom – which can then also be utilised by remotely participating students, so it is not only the participation that is blended but also the tools in a physical classroom can be virtual and vice versa.

One of the main benefits of blended learning is taking into account different learning styles and timetables of students. Some students get more out of classroom education, while others prefer attending remotely, especially due to the fact that they can replay difficult parts afterwards or increase the volume for example. However, in reality, the blended setting presents practical challenges. If students in the classroom engage in discussion with the teacher, they do not have microphones (e.g. in a class of 150 people) and thus remote learners will be cut out of the conversation.

The biggest challenge in blended learning is the same is in remote learning: teaching support. Teachers are quite isolated in the planning, development and implementation phases of blended and remote classes. Many resources are available at the University level and anywhere online – some could even say too many. There is no clear “best practice” as of yet that could be compared to using a blackboard to write mathematical formulas. Of course one can use a digital whiteboard just as well, but there are so many software and hardware options of doing that compared to the blackboard and chalk.

Personally, I have to admit that I like the flexibility and personalised learning aspect of blended learning but not the simultaneous face-to-face and remote teaching scenario as much. The individual ways of working should be supported with tools which are useful in face-to-face learning and remote learning. However, I fear that teachers do not have the resources to take into account the remote learners in a blended learning setting as much as the face-to-face classroom students. In my opinion, remote learners trade learning quality for flexibility in a blended learning setting.

In this topic, I was very keen on understanding these two things and I set out to find the answers for scientific articles.

• is a leader needed in a group?
• what style of leading is the best way?

First one must ask themselves, what are the roles in a group? It is an interpersonal need to feel part of a group or community, to “belong” and to feel valued and an essential member (McKenna & Green, 2002; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Brewer, 1991). Four fundamental roles can be seen in efficient, smaller groups, which are leader/facilitator, arbitrator/monitor, notetaker/time keeper, and devil’s advocate (Group Roles, N.A.).

• Leader/Facilitator
  • Communicates what are we doing, how we do it and what is the goal
  • Makes sure that the work is done
• Arbitrator/Monitor
  • Makes sure everyone’s voice is heard
  • The cheerleader of the group
• Notetaker/Time Keeper
  • Plans the agenda
  • Makes sure that all topics of meetings have time that they deserve
• Devil’s Advocate
  • Makes sure that something is not overlooked
  • Keeps an open-mind to problems, possibilities, and opposing ideas.

A leader is a person of the group that best embodies goals, values and attitudes of the group and its purpose (McKenna & Green, 2002). Research has shown that group members are aware of the subtle differences of the leaders, who closely “represent the group” and the followers, who do so to a lesser degree (Hogg, 1993).

In new groups, those who are most familiar with the topic at hand or most comfortable expressing their view that is inline with the group members can be seen as a leader. In addition to embodying the group, the leaders behavior influences the behaviors of the other group members (McKenna & Green, 2002).The leaders have more influence than others, not because they are actually exerting influence, but because the other members of the group perceive them as having more influence over “the followers” of the group (McKenna & Green, 2002).

Kurt Lewin (1939) was the first to identify three different styles of leadership:

1. authoritarian, 
2. democratic 
3. and laissez-faire. 

Authoritarian leadership, also known as autocratic leadership, focuses on individual control over all decisions and little input from the group members. It can be thought of as a dictatorship and these leaders make choices based on their own ideas. Autocratic leadership can be beneficial sometimes when decisions need to be made fast.

Lewin’s study found that the democratic leadership, also known as participative leadership, is generally the most efficient. Democratic leaders offer guidance to other group members but also participate in the group. Group members feel engaged, creative and as part of the process with a democratic leader, who still has the final say in the decision-making.

The laisser-faire leadership is delegative, which was shown to be least productive. Delegative leaders offer little or no guidance and the rest of the group starts to make demands to the leader and are less cooperative. This style can be effective if the group consists of experts in the field.

Summary

Based on this brief review of the role of leadership in a group, it could be said that leaders and followers exist in every group, yet they are not always appointed as leaders but can still be perceived as ones. Furthermore, democratic leadership style, where the leaders offer guidance but also participate in the group work, is the most efficient way and makes the group members feeling valuable and needed.

References

Group Roles: Maximizing Group Performance. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. Available at: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/group-work/group-roles-maximizing-group-performance#:~:text=There%20are%20four%20fundamental%20roles,students%20(see%20notes%20below).

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

 Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475–482.

Hogg, M. A. (1993). Group cohesiveness: A critical review and some new directions. European Review of Social Psychology, 4, 85–111.

Lewin, K. (1939). Field theory and experiment in social psychology: Concepts and methods. American journal of sociology, 44(6), 868-896.

McKenna, K. Y. A., & Green, A. S. (2002). Virtual group dynamics. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 6(1), 116–127. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.6.1.116

I have to admit that this topic didn’t really open up. In our own PBL group work we discussed about instructions, or steps, one needs to take in order to make an open course. Most of the two weeks our approach seemed quite chaotic but in the end the team ended up with good overall look at things you need to consider when creating an open summer school and resources you might want to consider that are free to use. One major challenge is that our University favors its own LMS over an open one, which make participating difficult and the integration of open courses to one place. This is because of security and continuity reasons. I guess if you are making a one time summer school, you could just utilize all free and open platforms and programs you can find. Then again, if you have in mind that someone else is going to be teaching the course you made in 10 years, maybe it is a safer bet to use your university’s LMS that everyone knows how to use. Sometimes the free platforms get shut down as well or are not maintained. Then there is also the issue of personal data security of these free platforms.

Now looking what others have done, openness can mean also the transparency between a student and a teacher for example. Openness has also a lot to do with copyright matters, since if you are using a photo from the internet in your closed course, you can do as you want since it a “private space”. As soon as you open the course, then it is a public space.

Already in topic 1, I noticed I had a blind spot in copyright and licencing,  or at least I would want to be more sure about what material I can use and how. I didn’t feel like I learned much more but I wouldn’t say it was because of lack of effort or good discussion on the matter but more about copyright and licencing being an unclear field. The basic mantra is understandable – do not copy what belongs to someone else. Remember to reference to the work of others when you are using it as a source. But where do you draw the line if you make you own illustration of a graph or a photo? What part of it is yours and what the original creators?

I was one of the topic leaders this week. As a topic leader, I took a deeper dive into digital literacies than I have before and learned a lot by delegating tasks and discussing with others. I think of myself as quite digital literate person in this digital age and it has a lot to do with my background in engineering and my video gaming hobby as a teenager. Topic 1 was a good start to ONL. I really like the 1 hour meetings. It is a good way to get to knew the people, and I feel I’ve met them, even tough we have only discussed in a video chat. I think that has more merit to it than you would expect because this pandemic has shown me it is harder to get to know people through zoom than in real-life, since video chat gives different first impressions than meeting physically.

During the investigation phase of our PBL group, I found a very good overall test called “The digital competence wheel” developed by an EU research project, DIGCOMP. These range from copyright and licensing, passwords, using hotkeys, detecting what is phishing and malware, social media use, sensitive information, digital tools, communication, creating content, using multimedia, using the latest tech, etc. The test is a bit long but very conclusive and has great descriptions for the questions and visuals. From the end result, I could see that I should focus on improving law, active participation and storage to improve my overall digital literacy.

My digital competence results.

I already knew that laws, regulations and copyrights are something I need to focus on. It seems that these topics do not bug me daily, so I am putting off learning more about them. Currently, I am puzzled about drawing an illustration about a commercial robot and can I then use it in a research paper? The illustration is drawn with the commercial robot underneath, as a guide to help me draw, so do I still need to ask permission from the commercial robot company or not?

Participation is also something that I knew I lack. But I guess it begs the question: “Do I need to be active in private social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) or public/work (LinkedIN, ResearchGate, Twitter)?”. I though for a long time that it is not necessary but I’m beginning to get the feeling of it actually might be necessary. I taken my first step. I’ve made blog at the beginning of this year to share my “first hand findings and thoughts” about my research. I have mainly done it for myself, to use writing for examining my thoughts and the new observations. I have noticed that sharing that text publicly, even if no one reads it, sets a certain threshold of quality and clearness for the text. I think that it is a good thing – the text can be casual but it has to be informative and clear.

Last and least: digital storages. I do not consider this a main issue of mine, even through the tests did reveal that I need to improve my knowledge of digital storages, it is not my main concern at the moment. I will address this weakness when I have a good reason to put more time into it, since I’m already good at local and cloud data, accessing data for APIs and whatnot. Next would be big data and creating my own APIs.

All and all, I found Topic 1 of ONL fun and informative. Also writing this blog post was a good idea to scan my through my thoughts.