This is where we should have been – the University of Applied Sciences HTW Berlin. But of course we were online in a well-managed zoom conference instead. Thanks to the Conference Chairs: Dr.-Ing. Carsten Busch and Prof. Dr. Tilo Wendler, and Martin Steinicke the Programme Chair, and not forgetting Louise and Dan Remenyi and the indomitable Sue Nugus from ACPI.
Still a joy and a wonder to chat directly with delegates from 30 countries across the world. The intimacy of the breakout rooms in the Knowledge Cafe was a great way to get to know new faces at the conference, groups of four for three rounds of 15 minutes still allowed us not just to introduce ourselves but to share conversations about the future of the university.
The keynote speakers included Professor Alf Inge Wang from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. This is the man who co-founded Kahoot! a widely used interactive quiz-making app involving bright colours and music/sound effects. This is all about engagement in class:
Though I have used it quite a bit in classes, there were still some new tricks to learn, particularly to deepen reflection and extend the competition among students by getting them to set up their own Kahoots. This keynote fitted the emphasis of the Programme Chair on game-based learning which figured largely across the conference papers (there was an example of Kahoot! in one of the Russian presentations).
The PhD Colloquium is always one of my favourite parts of the conference, a number of strong ideas presented; perhaps the most fluent and interesting was that given by Katharine Stapleford from Lancaster University on Re-examining the Theory of Transactional Distance Through the Narratives of Postgraduate Online Distance Learners – great critique of Moore’s theory of Transactional Distance, though much to discus as to what exactly distance learning is in the 21st century (from correspondence course to MOOC).
I also liked Lidia Feklistova’s presentation of her PhD work on Clusters of Programming Exercises Difficulties Resolvers in a MOOC – she is working with colleagues in the University of Tartu in Estonia. She had identified five different groups of respondents by the way they resolved problems: Bounded, Moderate, Step-by-Step, Social and Self-supporting resolvers. Interesting how different groups used different resources in and outside the MOOC to sort out their problems.
In the session I chaired there was a well-researched presentation on a new way to assess reading comprehension in schoolchildren – faster and much easier than traditional manual assessment. This was presented by Susanne Seifert and Lisa Paleczek from the University of Graz, Austria. Also a neat digital way of using in-basket assessment, commonly used in Assessment Centres by corporate HR in selecting new staff. This was presented by Agostino Marengo from the University of Bari, Italy. Graziano Cecchinato from the University of Padua, Italy discussed innovative e-learning tools, notably his use of perusall.com, a free tool developed by Eric Mazur and his team at Harvard. There are lots of ways to get student groups to comment on a text file, but this one looked professional and user-friendly, using contextual visualisation and upvoting to allow competition by students. Those of us desperately seeking better ways of engaging students in online seminars might find this tool worth a try. Finally in this session we had Bjorn Kristofferson, Olav Daehil and Tomas Sandnes with a presentation on their digital design to set database modelling questions into a user-friendly online format – a case of helping students understand very precise detailed errors in organising the database structure. This team was from the University of South-Eastern Norway and Kristiania University College in Oslo.
There were many more great presentations, too numerous to mention though I did make copious notes on my favourite Evernote throughout the two days. This was the 19th ECEL E-learning Conference and you would have thought that we might have debated already what needed to be said. But of course this has been Covid pandemic year and suddenly e-learning has been faced by the majority of teachers in schools, colleges and universities, many of whom had not been interested in it before but now have to take part. Among conference delegates and researchers in this field we have known for many years that you cannot just take a set of face to face course materials and upload them for learning to take place.
Let’s hope that most managers of educational institutions get that message soon – design of online learning takes time and effort, it can be as good as face to face learning and in some cases, eg where simulations and AR or VR are relevant, it can be better. But it cannot replace face to face learning altogether. I have always advocated a blend and now we are having to make that happen. Designing good learning experiences at any level takes more than just a good understanding of content knowledge, and that is particularly the case online, where knowledge of technology tools and online pedagogy which is based on interaction and engagement are vital.
One thing is for sure. Once the pandemic is under some version of control and we can meet more easily for face to face learning and teaching, things will be different. Learner expectations of what should be provided for them online are not going to go back to pre-pandemic levels. There will remain a higher expectation of how we use online media and tools for learning.
ch things as awards for book reviews in this journal. Reviewing a useful text is one of the more pleasurable academic activities, heartily to be recommended. We all have to read or skim new books as they appear, and make decisions about whether to recommend or not to our students or colleagues. Why not do the job properly and write a serious review?
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