Re:9. (3.-9.5.) : Reflection (Mikko)

I was reading 9. (3.-9.5.) : Reflection (Mikko) on Blogs for the red sun.. and

some of Mikko’s reflection came to my attention.  He says that sometimes the design seems to be too naive and not well argumented.

This made me think that to make courses successful, the ways of activating people need to be considered from the sides of:

- what might work

- and what might not work

For the latter case there always needs to be a strategy how to make students working if the initial idea is not working. It is part of scaffolding.

Maybe this Backup strategy should be part of the course design as well. It may consist of 1)how to detect that something is not working the easiest way 2) how to try to make it work 3) how to try something different instead.

Another concern what Mikko seems to have is pedagogical soundness of activities. I have pointed out earlier in our discussions some important things:

- teach to do something in the same environment what people need to learn (eg. dont plan activities in wiki if you teach blogging competences): augmented situational learning tasks must be relevant for these learners, then they will motivate too

- try to make interrelations between individual and collaborative spaces so that they were related by activities (eg. individual essays in blogs need to somehow be part of bigger picture - they must be needed for something as a group task, or for some bigger individual task and people should benefit from monitoring how each of them accomplishes tasks)

This relates with self-regulation and other regulation activities that must be balanced at the course, one should not block the other, but support it.

It also relates with the co-construction of knowledge principle.

Jonassen has proposed a model for designing constructivist learning environment on the web, which surround a problem with related cases, information resources that support knowledge construction, cognitive tools, conversation and collaboration tools, and social contextual support for implementation.

Try in your prototype explanations bring out what the facilitator should do. And what is the role of peer support. And how it will be done with the course tools in each activity.