Newsletter December 2021: TAL2021 - Online teaching and learning during, and especially after, the COVID-19 lockdown
For the 9th time, SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning hosted our annual Teaching for Active Learning conference - TAL2021 - on November 11, 2021. As always, the starting point of the conference was the Underlying Principles for Education of SDU, and this year’s main theme was “Online teaching and learning during, and especially after, the COVID-19 lockdown”.
In this month’s newsletter, you can read about how you can use the content and theme of the conference as inspiration in your own teaching practice. In the right panel, you will find 3 selected examples from TAL2021. If you are interested in the many other fine examples of active teaching and learning, you can read about them in the book of abstracts from the conference.
The keynote of Marianne Georgsen
The introductory presentation by PhD, associate professor, Marianne Georgsen, UCN, took the following publication as a starting point: Erfaringer og oplevelser med online undervisning på 9 videregående uddannelsesinstitutioner i foråret 2020.
Online teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown – what happened? And what did we learn?
Marianne Georgsen, PhD, & associate professor at UCN, held an introductory presentation regarding a qualitative and quantitative research project on nine institutions in higher education on the experiences gained from online teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown. The project asked four main questions: 1) Digitally supported didactic practices 2) The students’ experiences of these practices and their impact on different students 3) The teachers’ experiences with these practices and their impact on the teachers’ relationships with the students and 4) the digitally supported classes’ impact on collaborations between students and between teachers and students. The findings are of a describing character instead of normative and directive character because online teaching was a necessity, not a choice. The main conclusion is that the readjustment to online teaching was successful but challenged different styles of participation. Furthermore, it was covered that an organisational setup for online teaching is needed.
An important result from the research project is, that even though the teachers feel ill-suited for online teaching they still take a more favourable view on online teaching than the students. The teaching methods used in online teaching was well known. From that it can be concluded that teaching in the online format imitates known teaching methods rather than transforms them to fit the medium. In the interviews, it became clear that many teachers consider using (selected) experiences from online teaching in the future. Furthermore, it was covered that there are big differences on what resources the teachers choose to use when preparing online teaching.
In conclusion, Marianne Georgsen pointed out some interesting findings from the research project, among these that all roles in online teaching should be noticed and that there should be requirements for technological and didactic planning skills for teachers. And not least, that teachers’ continuing education is a central point in that context and that the institutional handling of that need is not sufficient. Read the rapport on the research project and a summary here.
Keynote presentation by Willem van Valkenburg
The afternoon keynote was held by Willem van Valkenburg, Executive Director at TU Delft Extension School for Continuing Education and President of Open Education Global. TU Delft has more than 3.5 million online students and has just started the project Digitel pro Partnership, which is close to the focus of TAL2021.
The purpose of Willem's keynote was to gain insight into TU Delft's strategic and organisational setup and how they, with their background, handled teaching under COVID-19, which is a perspective we found particularly interesting, as the report behind this morning's keynote by Marianne Georgsen highlighted the Danish educational institutions' lack of organizational setup. TU Delft is a technical university which for several years has invested heavily in offering online teaching in re- and upskills in higher education as well as blending learning for their ordinary campus students. However, a part of the courses is also offered as pure online teaching. For instance, you can take a full master's degree online at TU Delft. For this reason, they also have an organizational setup to operate online teaching.
One of the purposes for TU Delft of investing seriously in the development of online re- and upskills in higher education was that the developed online elements in various ways should also contribute to the development of blended learning in the ordinary campus teaching. In this way, the development of online re- and upskills in higher education contributes to the development of blended learning in campus teaching overall.
The table shows an overview of the different types of re- and upskill courses offered by TU Delft Extension School. It is noteworthy that they have developed as many as 130 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses i.e. 6 week courses) with around 3.5 million participants (enrollments). These MOOCs are also taken by students in preparation for e.g. master's programs, but can also be included as learning activities in a program. Similarly, 56 professional courses are offered with approx. 5.000 participants for people at work. Finally, 24 online academic courses are offered for experts and PhD students with approx. 800 participants. TU Delft has therefore over a number of years developed a significant number of online courses with associated online learning activities. About 300 teachers have been involved in this development and have therefore accumulated knowledge, skills, and competencies to develop and implement online and blended learning for both continuing and further education and campus teaching.
In his keynote, Willem reviewed TU Delft's strategy for developing the above and how, from an organizational perspective, they handled the COVID-19 challenge in relation to teaching. A key aspect here is that TU Delft sees blended learning as The New Normal and that they apply the well-developed EMBED strategy for the development of blended learning at both course, educational and institutional level. After reviewing TU Delft's strategic development from 2019 to 2021, Willem concludes with this point: “Transforming into the new normal is more challenging than the COVID emergency transition." In continuation of this, Willem also emphasises that
- "There is a willingness to change
- Teachers want to use the COVID experience to improve their courses
- Use the momentum of COVID to make structural improvements in the support of blended education".
You can see Willem's exciting keynote on the conference website.
Student preparation, active participation and flipped classroom in online teaching
At TAL2021, Clinical associate professor at the Institute for Clinical Research Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen, presented his experiences with student preparation, active participation and learning outcome in a flipped classroom on the Bachelor in Medicine during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Combining Breakout Rooms and Poll Everywhere to improve student engagement and participation during online lectures (via Zoom)
At TAL2021, Søren Buchholtz Storm, Assistant Professor of Innovation and Technology (TEK), presented his experiences of combining the use of Breakout Rooms and Poll Everywhere to increase student engagement and participation in online lectures via Zoom during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Online teaching: From emergency solution to development
At TAL2021, Flemming Smedegaard, Associate Professor and Chairman of the Board of Studies for International Business Communication, as well as graduate student and Deputy Chairman of the Board of Regitze Misser Klenke, presented their experiences with online teaching during the closure in the spring of 2020 and up to the spring of 2021, and how to go from emergency solution to development.