onsdag 19. desember 2012

Mandate for the Advisory Board

Which words would you like to highlite in this preliminary version of: Mandate for Campus NooA's Advisory Board?

NooA's mission is to provide quality online education that creates sustainable value, public awareness and footprints to follow.

The International Advisory Board should therefore consist of members that have special qualifications to pursue the mission and give strategic advice on ideal purposes such as:
  • Which services, subjects, courses and programs NooA could offer to support online learners in general and learners with special needs in particular.
  • Research and development activities that can contribute to the development of NooA, improved online teaching and student support services and general advancement for the benefit for the entire online education sector.
  • How NooA could disseminate research, evaluations and good practice in online education to the benefit of the national and international online education communities.
  • How NooA can use e-learning to support and contribute to social entrepreneurship and humanitarian activities.
  • Any other strategic and ideal purpose that supports NooA’s mission.

mandag 17. desember 2012

Reflections after 25 years with online teaching




During the fall of 1987, I developed and taught my first online course for NKI Nettstudier. As far as I know, it was the very first online distance education course in Europe. To celebrate the 25th aniversary, we have now scanned and uploaded the first English report Torstein Rekkedal and I wrote about our pioneering experiences wich is titled The Electronic College: Selected articles from the Ekko project. You may also be interested in the very first article I wrote for an international journal in 1987: In Search of a Virtual School

More articles in Norwegian and Englis are also available at http://issuu.com/mfpaulsen.

Since I now design and teach the first courses for Campus NooA, I have made the following reflections about the developments during these 25 years:

The ICT systems have continuously become faster and more powerful. The most important breakthrough for online education came with the web in the middle of the nineties. The second most important development was the proliferation of the learning management systems. Later, open educational resources and social media became increasingly more important for learning. It is also important to point out that the technology gradually has become more mobile and wireless. However, the most significant difference is that very few people were online in 1987. Now, almost everybody is online – all the time.

There has been a lot of focus on technology and digital learning resources, but I will speak up for people who suceed in utilizing the systems well. Learning platforms are important, but I will argue that it is more important how we implement and use the systems. Well organized models, effective student and teacher support, quality content and teachers who really care about their students - are crucial for high quality online education.

Maybe this is why online pedagogy hasn’t changes so much as I expected 25 years ago. The classroom metaphores and mindsets are still too strong. E-mail and online discussion forums are still central elements in online courses and the teacher workload remains high. The students get too litle flexibility, especially regarding individual start and progression. At the same time, they want swift and insightfull feedback from teachers and support personnel. As far as I can see, we have not improved much in these areas during the last 25 years. I therfore urge online educators to focus on how we can organize online education better, for the benefit of all the excellent and hard working online students and teachers.

søndag 16. desember 2012

lørdag 15. desember 2012

Refleksjoner etter 25 år som nettlærer



Høsten 1987 utviklet og underviste jeg det første nettkurset på det som etter hvert ble NKI Nettstudier. Så vidt vi vet var dette det aller første nettkurset for fjernstudenter i Europa, og for å markere 25-årsjubileet, har vi skannet alle de fire rapportene Torstein Rekkedal og jeg skrev om vår pionervirksomhet og lagt dem ut på http://issuu.com/mfpaulsen

I forbindelse med at jeg nå utvikler og underviser de første kursene på Campus NooA, har jeg følgende refleksjoner om utviklingen disse 25 årene: