The theme of this year’s course on ICT, Learning and Collaboration will focus on Media, Mattering, Mobility and Mixed Spaces. One of the reasons is that due to our education’s or programme’s physical movement to new premises in Friis, we have an unique opportunity to gain first hand experiences and data on how a large group of first semester students take into use these new mixed spaces (physical and online spaces). But also how new pedagogical ideas and initiatives (that have emerged as a result of aligning teaching practices and new spaces because of this move) will be enacted by students, lecturers and supervisors.
We had our first experiences with observing the 1st semester students already at the first day of the course. I found it interesting to see how the students organized them selves in the different lounges and group rooms. We observed without cameras just writing down notes whenever we found something interesting. I tried to focus on how the students use different kinds of technology in the new rooms as I find it particularly relevant for the focus of our education.
The second time of observing we used video observation. I found it difficult to figure out how to use the cameras for observation because you had to narrow your focus of observation into one or two groups even though there were maybe four or five groups in one room. It is quite a dilemma because it is important to have some data that you can go back to and analyse and maybe discover new phenomena. But on the other hands I think you loose some perspectives when you only focus of the things that the camera catches. Therefore, I would say that you have to supply the video data with some eye-observation.
On the third day of observation we got to attend a lecture for the 1st semester students about how to take into use the new rooms. The lecture was very focused on creativity and how to make surroundings that have a positive influence on the students’ creativity. The students had to do a little exercise were they got some materials and based on the word “incubation” they should create something out of these materials. I found it interesting to see how lost the students were at first. Some of them even went home because they found the exercise so frustrating. Despite of that the most of them actually created something very creative only based on their own fantasy, creativity and the few materials that were handed out. I think that this exercise was a symbol of a way to change the common understanding that students have of how the university is and what you do when you attend the university.
At the fourth lecture we had a very good discussion about all the data that we had been collecting during the week. We did an exercise were we had to draw a man and write down all the competences that a good qualitative researcher has to possess. We came up with this:
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