Malin ONL

2. Connecting After getting some of the apprehensions and general scepticism off my chest, I feel ready to approach this course with a more open mind. And it is encouraging that the question I asked in my first post is (somewhat) addressed in the reading material for this week. Davidson and Howell Major's (2014) article on group learning seems like a good starting-point. The two authors distinguish among three types of group learning. As the title of their article suggests, these are coöperative learning, collaborative learning, team-based learning and problem-based learning. All four approaches are constructivist in nature, but to different degrees, it seems. The coöoperative approach is the one I am best familiar with from before and have used in my own classrooms. What I like about this kind of group work is that I still have some control over what my students learn (p. 14). When students work together in groups, typically with study questions, they sometimes move superfi...

1. Getting Started I am way behind in my reading for this course, so writing anything on this blog has not made sense until now. Since I still have some catching up to do, in this entry, I will just comment and reflect on the texts and videos that appeared in the first few weeks of the course.   To begin with, I am not really sure what I have signed up for. This does not worry me too much, per se. Studies of students with advanced reading skills, for example, show that students who read a lot do not worry when a texts does not immediately make sense. Instead, they trust that they will eventually figure it out. In other words, they trust their own ability to make sense out of chaos and they trust that the chaos is illusory. Experience tells them it will probably be ok. So that is where I am. In the chaos, trusting that things will eventually begin to make sense.  But I am apprehensive. Reading the suggested blogposts by Kay Oddone I find myself increasingly qu...

This post is a test.