The course Introduction to Media Education was organized in the Univer-sity of Tampere in the autumn of 2008. The aim of the course was to
75 vide an introduction to the main perspectives, theories, concepts, and pedagogy in media education. In addition, after they had learnt the basics of the field the students were expected to be able to recognise them in practice and to continue their studies on media education. The course (5 ECTC credits) is a part of the basic studies (25 credits) in media educa-tion.
The main challenge of the course was to organise a flexible learning envi-ronment for a great number of students with various backgrounds, loca-tions and time schedules. The basic studies in media education are open for all university students and targeted in particular to students in teacher education, early childhood education, journalism and information studies.
A group of distance-learners from the University of Vaasa also attended the course.
The course was built within the structure of a traditional university course:
it involved 10 lectures, small assignments between the lectures, the elec-tronic course literature and the final exam. As a solution for the challenge of student variety we needed several options for the basic structure.
Media education as a subject matter challenged us to connect the know-ledge substance of the course with the students' own media usage, which is known to be a key factor in implementing media education in practice, in particular in schools (e.g. Kotilainen 2001; Flores-Koulish 2005; see also Luukka et al. 2008).
In order to achieve such aims we organised a learning environment that included a Moodle course platform, online lectures with Adobe Connect Pro, and weblogging. The Moodle is widely used in various courses in the University of Tampere, and thereby most of the students were already familiar with it. The primary function of the Moodle was to integrate every-thing into a solid course structure. This included typical elements such as course information, timetables and course materials. The small assign-ments between the lectures were also documented and returned in the Moodle. In addition, online lectures, recordings and weblog feeds were combined into the platform for the students to watch, read and comment.
All the students logged into the Moodle and used it throughout the course.
76 The lectures for 142 students caused challenges for timetable and loca-tion. To solve this we used the Adobe Connect Professional conferencing software to stream and record the lectures. The software is designed for conferencing, but it was taken into lecturing use because of the easiness and flexibility it provided. The lectures used only one-way audio and video and sharing the presentations, and a chat was used as a return channel (Figure 1). The lectures were also recorded. The students were able to participate in the lectures in a lecture hall, as real-time online lectures or as recorded sessions in their homes or practically anywhere. The students used and were also encouraged to try all these options. They also mixed them in various ways, such as reviewing the recorded lectures after being in the lecture hall, or participating in the lectures with their laptops. Both the online sessions and the recording were linked from the Moodle.
Figure 1. Screen capture of a recorded lecture, delivered via the Adobe Connect Pro.
Individual weblogging was an optional way - instead of the final exam - to accomplish the course by commenting on the lectures, by small assign-ments and the literature. The blogging option was introduced to the stu-dents as a challenge of doing the studies in a new way. 78 stustu-dents
77 lected the blogging option. Most of them understood what blogging is but had not been blogging before. In conjunction with the nature of the course content, the blogs were open and public, and the students were allowed to create the blog anywhere, such as blogger.com or wordpress.com. For keeping all the blogs in control, a small hack was needed. The RSS-feeds from all the blogs were first collected to the teachers' RSS-reader
(Google Reader), which aggregated them into a single blogroll with post titles and source information. This blogroll was then inserted into the front page of the Moodle platform (Figure 2). The result from this was a con-stantly updating list of the students' blog titles, which also made the Moodle alive and interesting to the students.
Figure 2. Screen capture: The Moodle platform of the course, enriched with a constantly updating blogroll.
78 The options described above allowed various paths for the students. The number of different combinations is uncountable, but we illustrate the dif-ferences with three case type descriptions of "Online learner", "Flexible individual" and "Self-challenger".
The online learner lives in another city or has other reasons to stay off-campus. A possibility to attend online-lectures is a great solution for her. Otherwise she couldn't take the course. She is familiar with the Moodle, and goes on happily with the assignments in it.. She can take the course fully at home, except the exam. She comes to the exam later on the department's common exam day.
The flexible individual has an irregular time schedule and is en-gaged in various courses and projects. He can manage it all if he can stretch or reorganise the timetable. He selects the most indi-vidual options: follows the lectures mainly as recordings, and writes a blog. When possible, he comes to the lecture hall. He knows that following the recorded lectures is much harder than the real-time lectures, and that writing a blog may be much heavier than taking an exam. However this is the only option for him because managing within the given time limits wouldn't otherwise be possible.
The self-challenger is a traditional student, used to lectures and ex-ams. She uses the Moodle if she has to, but understands that it does not help her to learn any better. However, she understands that as a media educator she should know the digital environment well. She has never been blogging before, but now that blogging is offered as a challenge, she decides to try it. She does not become a blogger outside the course, but is happy to have a personal expe-rience on blogging.
All this flexibility requires proper planning before the course. The workload is much bigger if compared with a course with only lectures, literature and an exam. The course was implemented in collaboration of two teachers, which was one aspect in creating an interactive and open atmosphere for the course. The course was evaluated with a standard university scale (1-5), which was clearly contrasted with the open, student-centered ap-proach.
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