Abstract
The article gives an overview of how the development of a blended e-pedagogy course for Higher Education teachers have used the experiences from many years of international online courses for European BA students. Influenced by the situated-learning perspective, this course employs student-centred teaching and learning methods. Moreover, inspired by the Community of Inquiry, this programme emphasizes the importance of Cognitive, Teaching and Social presence in the Virtual Learning Environment. The students plan their own courses in accordance with the stages of becoming an e-learner. One uses the ecological “Model of Relations between Didactical Categories” as a framework, and the e-pedagogy course is customized to be “hands-on” learning experiences, which promotes the desired e-teacher competences. During the course the students are engaged in discussions and co-operation by using different ICT-collaborations tools. At this time, the course has been held twice, and is available for everyone as an online learning resource under the Creative Commons license (http://www.virclass.net/eped). Evaluations by students have demonstrated that this hands-on training course can help students attain the necessary competences needed to be skilled e-teachers.
Highlights
The European project VIRCLASS (The Virtual Classroom for Social Work in Europe) has developed and carried out e-learning courses for BA students in Social Work all over Europe since 2005 (Larsen & Hole, 2007a)
Experiences from many years of international online courses for European Social Work students have been utilized in developing a blended e-pedagogy course for teachers in Higher Education
Even though all the students in the course were experienced teachers, they clearly expressed the need for new skills relating to technical issues connected to e-teaching
Summary
The European project VIRCLASS (The Virtual Classroom for Social Work in Europe) has developed and carried out e-learning courses for BA students in Social Work all over Europe since 2005 (Larsen & Hole, 2007a). In VIRCLASS the partners have developed competence-based curricular plans for two modules in Social Work with a comparative perspective, credited 5/10 ECTS credits (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System). One way of achieving this goal has been to initiate a new e-learning module, Community Work from an International Perspective, credited with 15 ECTS credits, with new learning material, a quality guide and a new framework agreement for a sustainable Virtual Campus. An analysis of the experiences of those working with e-learning courses shows a need for increasing the e-teacher competences among the staff at the partner institutions. An international course in e-pedagogy for teachers in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) was developed with a grant from Norway Opening Universities. The findings from the students’ evaluations of the course will be presented
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
