Teaching is about making students learn…
For the past couple of weeks I have been teaching at the bachelor programme in Human Centered Informatics. We take in around 200 students each year, so we meet large groups in the lecture halls. In the study programme there is a general interest in student centered teaching and active learning. In two recent activitites I have experimented with this:
On the fourth semester, 50 students in my course on ‘Interaction, learning and collaboration in virtual environments’ have worked with a design problem presented by a large Danish company. A representative from the company has presented the problem in two skype-sessions, and students have dealt with different aspects of the problem in small groups. On the last day of the course, students presented their design solutions and got feedback from lecturers and fellow students. Later their suggestions will be sent to the company.
On the 2nd semester, 130 students have participated in a three days-workshop on qualitative methods and communication in virtual environments. Students worked in small groups and larger groups with practical tasks (collecting data; analysing data; etc.); prepared presentations of their group work; took part in lectures; etc. Before the three workshop days, all students took part in solving some task in an on line environment, thus gaining experience with on line-collaboration AND generating data for later analysis at the same time.
This course was a collaboration with four colleagues, which made it possible to cover the many topics of the lectures very well, and furthermore to work in groups of around 25 students in separate rooms.
This week I am teaching another two days-workshop on videoobservation and analysis. This takes place in Ballerup (Copenhagen campus) with 70 2nd semester students.
