SITE 2016

In de week van 21 – 25 maart vindt SITE2016 plaats in het schone Savannah. Daar spreken Hans van Bergen (The social hub to liberate the student), Nanda van der Stap (Ensuring effective flexible learning through blended learning) en Stephanie Edwards van de HU/FE. Hieronder tref je de samenvatting aan van de artikelen die resp. Van Bergen, Van der Stap en Edwards hebben geschreven. Nanda van der Stap heeft bovendien voor haar artikel de TPACK SIG “Judi Harris Research Into Practice Award” voor 2016 gewonnen!

 

The social hub to liberate the student – Hans van Bergen & Hans van de Kant. Abstract.

In modern education there is a discussion about the balance between how to structure and how to liberate the student. Structure is necessary to teach the student the skills he needs to survive in society. Liberating students is necessary to improve and innovate society and to prepare students for unforeseen setbacks and challenging changes.

Creating knowledge means co-learning in a social context. Just as we shared knowledge in the Agora in Athens (600 BC), today we share knowledge worldwide over social media. Using that, the student connects formal and informal learning, creating his own personal learning environment. The social hub in our Next Generation Digital Learning Environment supports this learning process. We will explain our pedagogical concept and demonstrate the social hub.

 

Ensuring effective flexible learning through blended learning – Nanda van der Stap. Abstract.

This paper discusses how Flexible Learning can be implemented through blended learning at the teacher trainer college of the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, Netherlands. To ensure quality blended learning programmes, it is essential that teachers developing blended learning courses are trained, particularly in relation to applied methodology. To understand how best to implement blended learning at the teacher trainer college extensive research was carried out, the findings of which were made available to the University’s teachers in the form of a content-based, yet hands-on blended training programme with TPack as its exit point. The student results showed a marked improvement when following a blended learning course developed by teachers who were trained in the programme as compared to blended learning courses developed by non-trained teachers, In addition, the results of the blended courses (which were developed by trained teachers) showed a vast improvement of the non-blended courses, its so called ‘regular’ variant.

 

“Two years of living dangerously…” or will gamification increase student engagement in courses? – Stephanie Edwards. Abstract.

Two years ago the Utrecht university of Applied Sciences introduced “blended” learning as a pilot for several of its Master courses. This required a serious shift in perspective from both teachers and students. The success of this experiment, which has now been extended to all faculties of the university and now has 1000 courses presented as blended is largely due to its strong didactical concept and the user-friendliness of the online learning environment. The success has surprised us all, but we won’t become complacent. Since then, we haven’t stood still and are now introducing elements of gamification into our courses to further increase student engagement.