ICT SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS’ COLLABORATION IN PROBLEM AND PROJECT BASED LEARNING

1. ICT SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS’ COLLABORATION IN PROBLEM AND PROJECT BASED LEARNING Nikorn Rongbutsri (nikorn@hum.aau.dk) Md. Saifuddin Khalid (khalid@hum.aau.dk) Thomas Ryberg (ryberg@hum.aau.dk) Dept. Of Communication and Psychology E-Learning Lab – center for user driven innovation, learning and design

2. Outline of presentation • Overall question – identifying students use of technology to support their problem and project based group work • Background to the study – The Aalborg PBL model • Social media are coming to Higher Education: • Some pressing questions – vocal calls for educational change –due to technological changes (web 2.0) and/or students as digital natives / Net Generation • Some findings (and methodology) • Is there a need to support students?

3. The aalborg PBL model

4. The Aalborg PBL model • Problem Based Learning • Based on real-life problems • Project Organised Education • Project work supported by lecture courses • Group Work • groups of four to six students • supervised by lecturers/professors • Interdisciplinary Studies • Integration of theory and practice • Focus on Learning to Learn and methodological skills • University Wide Model - Used in all faculties (with variations)

5. Students’ use of time - lectures, courses and project work Project work : a major assignment within a given subject-related framework determined for each semester (thematic framework). Project related & mandatory courses supporting the project work Evaluated as oral examinations based on the project report or through individual written or oral examinations. 50 % 50 %

6. Problem Based Learning – the Process Literature Lectures Group Studies Tutorials Field work Experiments

9. The Aalborg PBL-model – in short • Long-term collaboration 4 months (semester) • Students own and define the problem to work with • Students decide on methods, theory, empirial investigations (together with supervisor) • Solution – ”open ended” • Students write up an app. 100 page project report reflecting their work • An university-wide pedagogy – not short-term or single course

10. Social media are coming to Higher Education Pressing questions from the tech-ed sphere

11. Why social media or web 2.0 in education • Some of the keywords from the tech-ed buzz-o-sphere: • Realised through use of: Blogs, wikis, social bookmarking etc. • Very much aligned with PBL thinking in many ways!

12. Web 2.0 in educational context (e-learning 2.0) – general buzz • From hierarchical structures based on courses and topics towards more student centred networks • From students as consumers to students as producers • From distribution to more horizontal patterns of exchange – peer-learning • From Learning Management Systems (LMS)  Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) • Encouraging exchange, sharing of knowledge and students’ production of knowledge and artefacts • Encouraging the production of personal portfolios – personal repositories

13. From LMS to PLEs • Separate management and learning • Focus on learning activities • Individual and collaborative tools • From big packages of educational software (LMSs) to numerous light-weight, interoperable web 2.0 service (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking) • Dashboard systems where students collect relevant resources and tools (Dalsgaard, 2006): http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm

14. Some pressing questions • Is the net generation or digital natives coming to higher education? • Strong discourses on ’digital natives’ and students being fluent with digital technologies • Crave educational change due to their intensified use of and experiences with web 2.0 technologies • What should the university provide – the VLE vs. PLE debate? Structured environment or self-chosen tools? • Are students better able to collate various tools and services to support problem and project based learning? • Are students digital natives capable of identifying technologies for problem and project based group work on their own? • Notion of digital natives has been criticised heavily from a research point of view!

15. Some selected findings

16. Methodology • Data collectionacrossdifferentlevels of scale - multi-methodstudycombiningqualitative and quantitative studies • Questionnaire (cross-campus to 3000 students – 253 completed): • Background • Mobile lifestyle (where do students work) • Project collaboration • Familiaritywith Web 2.0 tools (state of diffusion) • Narrative analysis of blog post (133 student narratives from 51 M and 82 F) • 1.semester students within a programme (humanisticinformatics) asked to write blogs abouttechnologyuseduring 1.sem (analysing diffusion of varioustechnologie) • Oberservational studies • Following a 2.semester group (interview and observation) – theiruse of technology

17. Illustration from questionnaire • Percentage of students who do notknowabout a certaintool – may not meantheyuse it iftheyknowabout it though!!! • Green: Pervasiveuseorknowledge of (twitter – knowledge, but littleuse) • Red: Toolsthatmightbeveryuseful, but little/scatteredfollowing

18. Findings from blog posts and observational studies • Facebook & Dropbox rather pervasive • Skype used among many groups • Some groups utilised Google services (e.g. Calendar, Docs) • Live next to formal systems (e.g. Moodle but are not intertwined) – formal system for course activities • Cautious about bringing in new tools in their problem and project based group work • However, some of the more ‘advanced’ tools for academia 2.0 purposes (tech-ed-buzz) and problem based project work were not very pervasive • Google Docs • Social bookmarking (delicious, diigo) • Social referencing systems / bibliography (zotero, refworks)

19. Summarising • Indications that students do bring in social media to the university – forming digital ecologies, which may live next to formal systems (happily or not) • Some systems pervasive, but systems which could support more advanced academic practices are largely under the radar of the students • Students are to some degree capable of creating efficient digital ecologies to support problem and project based group work – but also ask for introductions • For more advanced socio-technical academic practices to emerge there’s a need for facilitation – combining tech-support with meaningful integration of technologies into courses / group work • We should not ignore they are adopting social media, but neither should we ignore they might need facilitation to ‘scholarise’ their social practices, as to develop advanced academic socio-technical practices