Cooperative Online Education: Independence with the help of others

Cooperative Online Education Independence with the help of others Morten Flate Paulsen A 60-minutes presentation at the workshop: New technology – new possibilities and new challenges? Developing networks in teacher education and research 01.07.2011, University of Tromsø Slides available at: www.slideshare.net/MortenFP

About me
Thought my first online, distance education course in 1987
Director of Development and Innovation at NKI Nettstudier
Professor of Online Education
President of EDEN
Doctor of Education from the Pennsylvania State University, working for the American Center for the Study of Distance Education
Has been Adjunct Professor, at the Athabasca University in Canada and professor associado at Universidade Aberta in Portugal

20th anniversary in 2011, 8 in secretariat, 11 in EC
EDEN members from 400 institutions in 56 countries:
20th anniversary
200 institutional members
2000 potential members of NAP – Network of Academics and Professionals
Conferences
Research Workshop, Budapest October 2010
Annual conference, Dublin June 2011
Open Classroom conference Athens October 2011
Annual conference Porto 2012
EU-projects with 168 institutions
European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning www.eurodl.org
www.eden-online.org

NKI Nettstudier was established as a correspondence school in 1910
One of Europe’s largest providers of online distance education
More than 130 000 enrolments in online courses since 1987
Broad range of subjects from secondary to master level
About 400 distance education courses online (all in Norwegian)
About 13 000 online students in about 40 countries
About 70 % women
Individual progress plans/individual follow-up
Thousands of potential learning partners
Global student catalogue with 1650 profiles
Always room for more students
Exams at local schools and embassies
October 2010 www.nki.no

College, vocational- and secondary school Picture from: http://youtu.be/NXBNVauG9bE

400 online courses Picture from: http://youtu.be/NXBNVauG9bE

Partners Audio Journalism: Berghs School of Communication (Sweden) Video Journalism: UPDATE – Danish School of Media and Journalism Text Journalism: NKI Distance Education (Norway) Project is funded by Norgesuniversitetet (Norway)

Secondary school courses: Tonje Kvalvik 18 courses completed Vocational courses: Thor Steinsland 24 and Roger Skogberget 27 College courses: Trude Helen Flak 13 and Erma Bratic 14 Celebrating 100 000 online course enrolments in 2008 During the first 20 years, NKI’s online students enrolled in hundred thousand courses and spent many million hours of studying to reach their goals. This was celebrated August 22, 2008 with 5 students as guests of honour.

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/hedmark_og_oppland/1.7498862

There are NKI students who understand Norwegian in about 40 countries Translated by Google from www.nki.no/pp/ThereseSvihus

Presented with permission from www.nki.no/pp/LexidhSolstad I now try to get a diploma showing that I can write. Have worked as a TV journalist … but now the Fibromyalgia pains restrains me so much that I have to work from bed in the future.

Learning Centres Course D Course B Course A Course B Course C Course A Course A No teaching, but support, guidance and cooperation Access to computers and office facilities
60 students 12 courses

The book’s website: www.studymentor.com The Theory of Cooperative Freedom is described in my book, which you can download from the Internet. Online Education and Learning Management Systems: Global E-learning in a Scandinavian Perspective Also available at http://issuu.com/mfpaulsen/docs/onlineeducation/

The most interesting pedagogical challenge in our lifetime is to provide online education that combines individual freedom with meaningful cooperation.
I have struggled with this challenge since I first introduced my Theory of Cooperative Freedom in 1992.
www.ednews.org/articles/10626/1/An-Interview-with-Morten-Flate-Paulsen-Focusing-on-His-Theory-of-Cooperative-Freedom-in-Online-Education/Page1.html

Now…
… the web2.0 and PLE services may help the theory suceed…
The most interesting characteristics of Web 2.0 is the development of social networks that are hugely successful since the users produce, share and refine information of mutual interest and benefit for all the community members .

Some more relevant resources
E-viva em Portugal http://nettstudier.blogspot.com/
Transparency in Cooperative Online Education http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267
Cooperative Online Education http://seminar.net/index.php/volume-4-issue-2-2008-previousissuesmeny-124/100-cooperative-online-education
Cooperative Freedom and Transparency in Online Education http://www.slideshare.net/MortenFP/futuralia-3400339
Visualizing student profiles http://www.slideshare.net/MortenFP/visualizing-student-profiles-through-nkis-online-catalogue-and-student-network
Transparency for Cooperation http://toonlet.com/archive?m=s&i=11245

One may say that:
Individual learning is conducted alone
Collaborative learning depends on groups Cooperative learning takes place in networks

NKI provides cooperative online education Independence with the help of others

Cooperative learning
Cooperative learning seeks to develop virtual learning environments that allow students to have optimal individual freedom within online learning communities.
Cooperative learning is based on voluntary participation in a learning community
Cooperative learning benefits from transparency
NKI’s Philosophy: We facilitate individual freedom within a learning community in which online students serve as mutual resources without being dependent on each other.

Six Dimensions of Flexibility Challenge: How to provide individual flexibility and a community for learning?

Six Dimensions of Freedom It is difficult to combine individual flexibility and cooperation http://ppel4.pbworks.com/

Processos Pedagógicos em Elearning Each Study Unit had 4 Week-long Activities
Find, study and share materials related to the theme and organizing it together with ideas and thoughts in an annotated bibliography in your blog
Produce a learning object related to the theme, publish it somewhere
Write reviews in the forum on one annotated bibliography and one learning object published by colleagues
Take part in a structured discussion on issues related to the theme
http://nettstudier.blogspot.com/2010/04/online-teaching-techniques.html

Activity 2: Examples of Learning Objects my students published in various web2.0 services http://issuu.com/svalente/docs/learning_process_-_sv http://issuu.com/eduardarondao/docs/ppel/16 http://toonlet.com/creator/monicavelosa http://voicethread.com/#q.b700875.i3706622 http://animoto.com/play/mcWnwcwLlchUW7kikfjkDg?autostart=true http://lenita.edu.glogster.com/learning-partners-when-students-become-teachers/ http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1mvrs/TransparencyinOnline/resources/index.htm http://goanimate.com/movie/0t_WqQCZr6m8 http://goanimate.com/movie/0tHSCTHKrJ8U http://prezi.com/jtuypqux9uoe/cooperative-freedom/ http://prezi.com/vrphgc8096jy/cooperative-freedom/ http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6292799/ http://www.scribd.com/doc/28688394/Cooperative-Freedom-in-NKI http://www.youtube.com/MortenFP#p/f/3/g6Oo1-VXsWI http://www.slideshare.net/nmso/learning-object-theory-cooperative-freedom http://groups.diigo.com/group/uab-mpel3 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000775922345#!/group.php?gid=206533992596 http://actividade2.wikispaces.com/

The unit structure is adopted by the EU-project e-teacher 2.0 | E-teacher 2.0 | www.e-teacher-2.eu |

Summary of experiences from Universidade Aberta
The students publish their work in blogs (Blogspot, Wordpress etc.)
They share it in Moodle, Facebook and Diigo
They make learning objects in Toonlet, Glogster, Slideshare, Youtube, Issuu, Voicetread etc.
It’s much work to overview this distributed learning environment
The “entire world” can see our work and give us feedback
Many tutors and students may not be comfortable with this extreme openness.

NKI Innovations in Online Education
1986: First LMS
1987: First online distance education course
1996: First web-based courses
1998: First online journal for students (Nettskoleavisen)
2002: First m-learning courses
2003: Speech synthesis in all courses
2004: Individual planning system
2004: Continuous tracking of turn around time
2006: Learning partner system
2008: Global student profiles
2009: Individual progress reports
Rosing Competency Award 2003 Baldic Award 2006 Tisip E-learning Award 2007

NKI students have individual progress plans UA students have collective progress plans Copyright Atle Løkken

NKI introduced the individual planning system in 2004 assignments that are completed assignments that are delayed according to the plan assignments that are planned

www.youtube.com/NKINettstudier

In January 2009 we started to e-mail individual monthly progress reports to all students
Includes personal:
Contact information
LMS settings
Progress report
Planed progress

Lists with information about next submission number and planned submission date makes cooperation easier

Boldic Award 2006 NKI’s Learning Partners
Innovative service for voluntary cooperation between students in a large online learning community
International award for the Baltic and Nordic countries.
The jury stated that NKI’s Learning Partner Service: "Furthers and develops the Nordic tradition in ODL. The learning partner concept adds a new, innovative dimension of student support to flexible distance education.“
Learning partner - opportunities for cooperation in distance learning
www.elearningeuropa.info/directory/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=8294&doclng=6

There is an online demo explaining in Norwegian how students may find learning partners
www.nettskolen.com/multimedia/laringspartner1_viewlet_swf.html
Make your personal presentation
Decide who may access it
Search for potential learning partners
Invite somebody to become your learning partner

Presentations May 2009
All 10102 users of NKI’s LMS have personal presentations which automatically list relevant information about them and their courses as shown below.
5299 of them have added some personal information, typically a photo and a description of previous education, work experience and personal interests as shown below. www.nki.no/pp/fagerbergtr

Transparency or privacy ?

Transparency promotes cooperation Dalsgaard, C. and Paulsen, M.F. (2009) Transparency in Cooperative Online Education. IRRODL, Vol 10, No 3.

Transparency improves quality

Three degrees of transparency
Low: Private e-mail
Medium: Class forum
High: Global web2.0 services
Cooperative learning communities must balance transparency and privacy.
Students should be able to influence their privacy level
Which transparency level do you choose for evaluation?
Which transparency level do you choose for evaluation statistics and summaries?

Online teachers deserve decent support services http://nettstudier.blogspot.com/2011/08/online-teachers-deserve-decent-support.html

Continuous tracking of response time
Introduced in May 2004
Resulted in much discussion in the teachers’ online forum
A few teachers voiced strong criticism, doubts and reservations
The average response time for all 150 teachers in 2010 was 1.77 days . In 2008 NKI introduced an automatic e-mail reminder to the tutors who had one ore more assignments waiting for 7 days or more.

Quality goal: XX % of students positive or neutral My results last quarter/year: 93/84 % Average teacher results last quarter/year: YY/ZZ % Frequent, anonymous evaluation by students Automatic e-mail reminder if quality is under threshold value Quality Barometer

Thank you I care, so I share: http://nettstudier.blogspot.com http://home.nki.no/morten https://twitter.com/MFPaulsen www.slideshare.net/MortenFP www.facebook.com/mfpaulsen www.eden-online.org/blog

Cooperative Online Education: Independence with the help of others

by Morten Flate Paulsen on Aug 21, 2011

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