Courses as research projects and students in the role as researchers

DUN Conference 2017 May 30-31

Courses as research projects and students

in the role as researchers. A case study

Kjetil Sandvik, Associate Professor, Media, Cognitionand Communication, University of Copenhagen


Disengaged students: blame the

pedagogical set-up

I never teach my students. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

Albert Einstein


Agenda

• Inspired by theories on entrepreneurial

education as well as on learning

communities , this paper presents and

discusses the pedagogical potentials and

challenges in relation to a case in which a

MA course was turned into a research

laboratory situating the students with roles

as researcher.


Point of departure

• Learning is related to the environment created for the learning experience

• It comes with specific routinazations and structures which shape and determine the educational practices.

• The auditorium and the classroom-like lecture rooms so dominant at the universities incite specific pedagogical and didactical routines and rituals:

• Lectures comes with specific hierarchical roles ascribed to the lecturer (the provider of knowledge) and the students (the receivers of knowledge).

Helle Neergaard & Dorthe Refslund Christensen (2017)Breaking the waves: Routines and ritual in entre-peneurship education, in Industry & Higher Education


Point of departure

• The routines and rituals embedded in the physical design as well as the pedagogical design of the learning situation may…

• go against ideas about (co-)creating learning environments that are engaging and inspiring and which urge the students to be in charge of their own learning processes and development.

• They (may) work counter to making students active and to provide a sense of being part of an academic environment (belonging!).

• They contradict the idea that learning is not (just) about acquiring knowledge, it is also about researching and creating knowledge.


The case

• MA course (“Communication 2.0”) in cross media communication turned into a research laboratory providing the students with roles as researcher.

• The course was rooted in an actual research project ‘Meaning Across Media’

• As such the students’ research efforts contributed to the research objectives of the Meaning Across Media project.


Course design: laboratories• An important part of the course was not only

introducing students to communication 2.0 but also…

• inviting the students to partake in an ongoing field of research

• …concerning methods, theories and perspectives concerning this particular field of communication studies.

• As such each seminar consisted of a laboratory in which students were invited to theorize and analyze the specific topic of said seminar in collaboration with senior researchers.


Course design: students as

researchers• The students were offered the role as (junior-)

researchers

• The students were divided into research teams

• The students were provided with research questions and inputs from senior researchers (and suggestions for relevant literature)

• The students performed research in the shape of doing various case-studies, analyzing, theorizing and discussing

• The students created short research reports after each laboratory to be put in the research team’s online files

• The students presented their results at the course workshops (mini-conferences) in the shape of research paper presentations with opponents and discussions.


Results• Even though not accustomed to this role, the students

engaged in the role as researchers

• High level of self-organized activities in the research teams

• High level of out-put in shape of ’conference-papers’ (more than just final exam papers).

• Very positive evaluation (apart from critical comments about the auditorium assigned to the course and the curricula and exam regulations not being suited for this kind of experimenting course format)


Obstacles

• The pre-coding of students:

o focus on doing ‘what’s expected’

o getting it right, getting good grades

o fixed ideas of ‘how learning in universities should be’

o reluctance towards experimenting, making excurses, challenging knowledge (and themselves…)

• The pre-coding of the system:

o course-administration,

o evaluation-system,

o exam system etc.


The coding of the learning space

Not really what you would call a laboratory, eh?


Where to move: towards the

learning community as

pedagogical principle• Participants of learning community must feel some sense of

loyalty and belonging to the group (membership) that drive their desire to keep working and helping others

• The things that the participants do must affect what happens in the community; that means, an active and not just a reactive performance (influence).

• A learning community must give the chance to the participants to meet particular needs (fulfillment) by expressing personal opinions, asking for help or specific information

• A learning community must give the participants possibilities to share stories of events with particular issue included (emotional connections) emotional experiences.

Bonk, C. J, Wisher, R & Nigrelli, M. (2004). Chapter 12. Learning Communities, Communities of practices: principles, technologies and examples in Littlton, Karen, Learning to Collaborate. Nova. USA.


Concluding remarks: Changing the

game• Breaking up the teacher-student hierarchy: in a learning

community setting the teacher is not the (sole) ’information provider’ but a participant (with specific skills) in the learning-environment and –processes facilitating learning as collaborative and co-creative activities (entrepreneurial approach to teaching/learning)

• Challenging the ideas about teaching and learning: from acquiring (fixed) knowledge that can be tested/evaluated to engaging in knowledge-production and discussion: what is knowledge, how does it come into existence, can it be contested, disrupted, improved…?

• Challenging the ’nature’ of course planning: from fixed learning goals to continuous making and remaking the goals: adapting to what is important, necessary and interesting to learn…


Concluding remarks: what to

keep in mind• Design: how do we organize learning-

spaces (online/offline) that ensure learning community processes (every space comes with specific agencies: possibilities and limitations, e.g. the lecture room, the auditorium, the online course-system)

• Practices: how do we create open and collaborative processes – thinking beyond the traditional ’teacher lectures, students acquire knowledge, students reproduce knowledge, teacher evaluates and provides feedback’-scheme

• Roles and rituals: giving the students responsibility and empowerment in the learning processes: collaboration and co-creation – being part of creating the learning process, defining the goals, designing the methods etc.o Academic makerspaces!

• Flows: how are the communication patterns and logics organized: traditional one-way with possibilities for asking questions, giving comments, taking tests etc. vs. multiple-ways: dialogue, collaborative processes


…• Coding of rooms: a traditional class room, lecture

room or auditorium with a ‘stage’ for the teacher including black/whiteboards, screens for powerpoint-presentation and tables and benches/chairs for the students in front of this vouch for a specific learning environment and teaching format in contrast to open spaces, spaces where furniture and communication technologies can be moved around and arranged to suite the specific learning situation.

• Consider this: Online learning environments often remediate offline ditto: online lectures (e.g. TED talks) duplicate a traditional classroom setting, online ‘class rooms’ are set up with the same communicative logic as in offline class rooms – contrary to conference-setups (like Google Hangout, Adobe Connect…) or online-worlds (like the basic idea of Second Life) with the possibilities of collaborative learning processes.

Courses as research projects and students in the role as researchers

Presentations & Public Speaking

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