Collaborative, active and reflexive learning: facilitation techniques and supportive spaces, digital and physical
By Hayley Ho and Kateryna Pereverza
This story belongs to the series “Meaningful collaborations for systems transformations”. This is a video story that we recorded to share our first reflections after designing a digital remote version of the course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations” in January-March 2021. The presentation was initially shared during the SoTL conference in KTH. Discussion within the conference provided us with several interesting directions for further reflections, some of which we highlight in the story in addition to the video.
When preparing to share our insights about the facilitation of collaborative, active and reflexive learning from the context of the course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations”, we chose to reflect on and compare our experience of designing it in the physical setting last year and in the digital one this year. In the presentation, we take an experimental approach to illustrate both physical and digital approaches — running it as a dialogue between us, where Kate talks about the physical set up of the course in 2020 and Hayley about the digital set up of the course in 2021.
The talk was initially prepared for the conference SoTL 2021 “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” in KTH, Stockholm. An early abstract submitted for the conference written in autumn 2020 included only our preliminary thoughts about the digital set up and is predominantly focused on the physical set up of the previous year.
Reflections based on the discussion after the presentation
Participants of the SoTL conference reflected afterwards on how our discussion format and the use of a “sketchy” Miro board to share visuals created a personal and informal presentation that drew them in. This led to the issue being raised related to what digital tools might we need to have ready for when we are able to meet physically again and teaching takes on a more hybrid format. Here, we reflected that it is not so much what tools we need to have prepared, rather that we should maintain an open mindset to experiment with the tools available to suit the context of what is required. Already in the physical context last year, we found that while we had suggested that students could use certain digital tools, they often decided themselves in their groups which tools to use, and how to mix different tools to work and communicate. In the same way that we had provided different physical materials and a space for students to use creatively, digital tools could be treated in the same way.
On Padlet, which was used by the conference as a space for questions and discussions, the issue was raised about free-sharing ideas and how to give proper credit to those coming up with ideas. Already last year we began discussing the importance of a “sharing mindset” in collaborative courses. We see this as part of a wider challenge that needs to be addressed related to grading versus learning in project-based courses. Students are often “locked in” by grading criteria, and may often overlook or undervalue valuable learnings which are beyond the grading criteria.
Conclusions
We ended our conference talk by highlighting the importance of the experimental approach to designing the course both digitally and physically. The intention to facilitate active, collaborative and reflexive learning was an important guiding idea for us when developing facilitations techniques and setting up supportive spaces for the course. The digital course design of 2021 was rich in insights which we hope to share in upcoming stories for this series. Meanwhile, you can check our five stories about the course last year.
