Reflecties op SURF Onderwijsdagen 2018

A student in the panel notes that he needed a month to understand where he could find essential information. Right now, with the help of LTI links, the Learning Management System (LMS) is often part of a complete ecosystem of associated tools. The honeycumb seems a practical ‘checklist’ to me for the implementation and further development of the LMS within an educational institution.

But then, do we understand how a beehive can be a safe online haven for students for collaboration and discourse, in its complementarity, really enriching education? Knowing what really works, a very urgent and necessary task. As a researcher I look forward to contribute to the Evidence-based educational innovation with ICT zone of the National Acceleartion Agenda. After all, we know so little about it now. During the seminar Evidence based educational innovation with Blended Learning I will discuss this in more detail.

If we already think we know what works, it is the question, as Lauren Herckis points out, whether that also works in another  context; context is king. The question is what do we actually mean with realy working ? Does the intervention serve to increase learning efficiency, student motivation a cost reduction or a combination of these themes? Some teachers understand how learning technology can enrich their education, but how are they rewarded for their effort and facillitated in necessary time? What is the goal of educational innovation with ICT and who recognizes that goal? Lauren underlines we cannot afford not to evolve with our syllabi while being surrounded by moving targets, moving in different directions toward different goals. Or in short; all actors involved and part of our educational system. More attention to the possibilities of open education, as explained by Robert Schuwer and Martijn Ouwehand, very well explained, can help.

Janina van Hees and Michel Jansen rightly note, when discussing their 23 best practices in the field of online and blended learning,  how important it is to make students part of the project team and give this team dedicated time. It is a good thing that Michel reminds us to definitely put a lot of time into the functioning of a team as a team during the early phase of a project. Time that you earn back twice during the further execution of the project. It is no coincidence that Group Cohesion is one of the categories belonging to the Social Presence of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which, like the SURF education days, lasts about 20 years (in research on online and blended learning). I see the right attention for the social presence as the magical glue for effective combining  online and face-to-face activities. My focus for the next 20 years …