with virtual learning
Matti Kuikka & Kati Antola
Abstract
In this article, we outline the experiences we had when an international project man-agement course was arranged jointly between two institutes of higher education. The course was taught at Satakunta University of Applied Sciences in Rauma and Turku University of Applied Sciences in Turku for Master’s degree students in spring 2015.
The instructors from the schools taught in the course with the help of a real-time collaborative video and virtual learning environment. The ViLLE tool, developed at the University of Turku, was used as the virtual learning environment instead of the major learning environments (Moodle, Optima by Discendum ltd) in the Universi-ties of Applied Sciences in Rauma and Turku. The course was shared using a real-time video between the locations and to the students joining in the course remotely from home with the HILL web-conference environment.
Eight students from Rauma and twenty-six students from Turku participated in the course, where all the materials, assignments and exams were available in the virtual learning environment. Feedback from the students was collected and compared with the feedback of the previous course arranged in 2014 in Turku. There were no ma-jor differences in the feedback of 2015 compared to the earlier instance. However, one finding was that the cognitive load by the new learning environment caused challenges both for the students and teachers. Joint courses can be arranged in the
future, too, but more effort shall be put into the introduction of the used learning environments, the course planning and the communication between the teachers as proposed by recent researches about collaborative teaching for online and blended learning.
Introduction
This article describes how the Master-level project management course was arranged jointly with Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS) and Satakunta Univer-sity of Applied Sciences (SAMK). Most of the learning sessions were arranged with the help of real-time video. The students participated in the classrooms sessions in Rauma and Turku, but also remotely from home. One in-class learning session was arranged in Turku where all the students worked in the same physical location.
TUAS and SAMK use different learning environments: Optima is used at TUAS and Moodle is used at SAMK. However, another educational tool, ViLLE was se-lected as the learning environment in the joint set-up. ViLLE was a new learning environment for all the students and for the SAMK teacher. The TUAS teacher has used ViLLE since 2013. Similarly, the mainly used video conferences systems in the universities are different. SAMK’s video conference environment HILL was used during the course.
This article analyses the experiences students and teachers had with the joint set-up.
The article also describes how similar approaches should be arranged in the future, and indicates what should be considered when implementing joint courses with vir-tual learning tools. The teachers of the course are the authors of this paper.
The article is structured as follows: First we present the related terms, technologies and researches which are then followed by the case description. The case is presented starting from the course and the learning environments used at SAMK and TUAS.
Then we present how the course was arranged jointly in spring 2015. The methods used are presented, followed by the results focussing on the course feedback received.
In the discussion and conclusions section we outline the teachers’ experiences, and propose how the joint blended courses should be arranged in the future.
Context
The learning method where teaching is provided digitally, typically via the inter-net, is called Online Learning. It is not necessary to implement online learning re-motely like Distance Learning, which is the general term when the teaching and/or materials are provided remotely. A course applying distance learning may use other materials than the ones provided via the internet such as books, radio programs or DVD videos. Allen and Seaman (2014, 6) define Online Course as a course where at least 80% of the teacher-led in-class sessions are replaced with online learning.
(Picciano 2015, 6–7.)
The term Blended Learning refers to the method where the mixture of online learn-ing and in-class teachlearn-ing are applied. For instance, two hours in-class and one our online in a week. The activities can be run as their own and, therefore, the in-class and online activities do not need to be dependent on each other. Video conferenc-ing, YouTube videos and blogs are examples of tools for collaborative work with blended learning. Note, that Allen and Seaman (2014, 6) define that the learning method having 30–79% implementation online is called blended learning. (Pic-ciano 2015, 6–7.)
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a system or a set of tools in an educational institute that provides learning space for courses. Various learning methods from distance learning to traditional in-class teaching can be supported by VLEs. VLEs typically contain means for students and teachers to maintain materials, collabora-tion space, assignments and exams for courses. (JISC 2016.)
ViLLE (villeteam.fi) is an example of a VLE. Compared to most other VLEs it is an exercises-focussed learning environment. It was created in 2004 for research purposes in order to create new ways for enhanced learning by the support of tech-nology innovations. An important target group for ViLLE is the teachers. New features are created based on teachers’ needs and teachers are able to share their teaching resources around the globe with ViLLE. For instance, teachers in Aus-tralia can create exercises in ViLLE that are available for teachers in Finland, and vice versa. A number of research papers have been written about the learning results with ViLLE (ViLLE Team research publications). ViLLE has improved learning re-sults for programming in higher education (Kaila et al. 2014; Kaila et al. 2015), for mathematics in primary school (Kurvinen et al. 2014), and for business
mathemat-ics in higher education (Kuikka et al. 2016), as examples. However, new tools, such as ViLLE, may provide challenges as well. Therefore, it is important that new tools are properly introduced to students and teachers before they are taken in the wider use in order to decrease problems such as the cognitive load caused by the new tools (Laakso et al. 2008).
Another important concept in virtual learning is the Personal Learning Environ-ment, PLE. PLE is the student’s own solution for learning environEnviron-ment, whereas pedagogical learning environment is what the school or teacher supports (Ihanainen
& Leppisaari 2009, 18–19).
Collaborative teaching is a way to instruct a course jointly. Collaborative Online Teaching is applied when several teachers are offering a joint course to students mainly via internet. Fulton et al. made a research about the collaborative online teaching for the social work course. Undergraduate students participated in the course from several locations remotely in Alberta, Canada. They had both real-time and non-real time elements in the implementation. For the real-time activities they used synchronous meetings and small group presentations. The preparations and presentations of the group work in the course were provided via web-conferencing.
In case of asynchronous tasks they used discussion boards. The teachers took part also in the discussions which is important to the students’ motivation. The teachers mainly used Skype for the communication and planning between themselves, but e-mails were also used. This enabled the teachers to practise the usage of the real-time communication tools they use with the students. (Fulton et al. 2015.) Fulton et al. recommended that there shall be time reserved for planning and prep-aration of a collaborative online course and for the prepprep-aration of group assign-ments. For the group assignments it is essential to design the assignments in such a way that the workload is distributed evenly between the students. Similarly to the students, the teachers should also meet regularly in order to align course targets, grading criteria, pedagogy and materials. Additionally, they emphasised the impor-tance to identify the technical skills needed for the collaborative online teaching.
The critical technical skills need to be identified before them are applied. (Fulton et al. 2015.)
Vickers, Field and Melakoski wrote a report about collaborative teaching with blended learning used in the project “Media Culture 2020”. Forty students and ten
teachers from five universities (Tampere University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University of Lincoln (United Kingdom), the University of Vic (Spain), Liepaja University (Latvia) and HKU Hilversum (Netherlands)) took part in the imple-mentation of this EU funded Erasmus Intensive Programme project. They used pre-workshop activities, in-class pre-workshops, and documentation assignments for learn-ing with blogs and wikis. In addition, they used various social media platforms and cloud services: for collaborative working Google docs to share documents, Google Hangouts for real-time videos that were saved in YouTube for further use, Face-book mainly for informal discussions and Blogger for publishing the results. The implementation contained two in-class workshops, one in Tampere (Finland) and the other in Liepaja (Latvia). The pre- and post-workshops were arranged online us-ing social media and cloud services. This enabled wide virtual participation without costs for travelling. This international project was successful and they recommend-ed this kind of blendrecommend-ed learning approach with both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (non-real time) elements. Social media and cloud technologies pro-vide an innovative learning environment for both teachers and students. The expan-sive international collaboration using cloud services provide experiences to students that create excellent atmosphere for learning, as stated by the students in the paper:
“it was the best experience ever as students”. (Vickers et al. 2015.)