IT course examination:

Background:

My teaching portfolio, consists today of a combination of courses mainly at the under-graduate and post-graduate level, where I’m either a teacher or a course organizer. Here I would like to specifically discuss a course for PhD students that I have been organizing since 2007. This course is structured as a research seminar series including a total of 15 lectures (1 lecture/week) in the filed of pathogen/host interactions covering a broad range of disciplines including virology, bacteriology, parasitology and immunology. The course also includes an examination that I have previously organized in the form of a project work followed by an oral presentation.

The pedagogical problem:

One major aim in the course is to encourage the students to critically think and discuss experimental approaches presented during the scientific seminars and also to reflect around how to apply such methods in their individual research projects.  Despite clear instructions to both speakers and students and several emails, a recurrent problem is the limited interactions with the teachers (during the seminar) as well as between the students themselves.

Suggestion:

To cope with the above-described issue, I plan to create a wiki named “host/pathogen interactions” in KI-commons. I will first organize the students in groups of 4 and invite them to join the wiki. Each week, a group will be assigned the task to (1) lead a debate (on wiki) around the presented seminar and (2) write a review of the literature in the presented topic. In addition to the course literature (which will be available in ping pong), the students will also be given the possibility to meet with the speaker (at the end of their talk) for an “interview” where they can voice record or film. They could for example use this material to populate the wiki. Though a blogg could also represent a good alternative for task1, the reason why I still prefer a wiki is because it opens the possibility for the group to nicely work together on the summary (task2). At the same time it would be still possible to follow the individual contribution of the students and to follow their work-progression. And why not inviting the “speakers” to join the wiki and present their opinions? Again wiki is the optimal choice, since even non-KI teachers in the course can join to animate debate!

Expected outcomes:

I hope that implementing a “host/pathogen interactions” wiki in my course would act as an “ice-breaker” to foster more interaction and exchange of ideas between the students. This will also give the students more time for reflection and importantly to also learn how to be a team player!

If you are curious, then see you again around June 2011, then I will hopefully be able to tell you about the outcome of this adventure!

PowerPoint, Digital Storytelling and much more…

What a day! ... constant flow of "smart" digital tools around creation and publishing. I enjoyed learning several of new features that are directly imbedded in PowerPoint. The “transform to smart x” function was a favorite and to me is an excellent addition! (hope can find that on my MAC). Creating figures including diagrams, pictures with animations becomes far easier. In the future, things that I would like to use more often in my ppt presentations are: photos and videos. A small limitation, in my taste, is the need to exit ppt in order to open a you tube film. I also discovered another side of Picasssa together with Picnik and all the possibilities those programs could offer for editing photos but also sharing albums. Digital storytelling is a fine way of illustration, which stimulates a creative thinking. I could use it in different forms of group work and may be at the end of a course to summarize the highlights (or learning outcomes). PREZI: Despite a flashy and dynamic layout, that I really liked, I felt that it gets hard to follow and there is a risk to loose the focus of the audience. However this may be a powerful tool to show associations between different observations. If I change my mind, then I would for example use PEZI to summarize group discussions or as a mind map at least as a start.

Wiki: A FANTASTIC Web 2.0 tool, …

After leaning about Ping Pong, writing my 1^st blogg, today, it was time for the 1^st Wiki! My spontaneous reaction was: … but this is a very much of a “blogg-like” tool? However I discovered after the break (and a coffe) that I have missed one important detail! Actually this is a rather unique tool since as opposed to a blogg, a wiki offers the possibility to publish information that is intended to be modified thus opening all the possibilities for different forms of collaborative working. What I also liked about it is the extreme ease in editing and the possibility to track the changes.

Now the question is whether and how I could integrate Wiki in my current teaching?  My first reaction is that I would like to try to integrate first wiki in one of the post-grad courses I’m running and which is build on a weekly research seminar series given by invited speakers. In this course I usually ask the students to individually write a half page résumé at the end of each seminar.  With wiki "in hands", we could take those summaries MUCH and much further...

I could for example build a group of 4 students for each seminar where the students could not only summarize the content of the seminar but also express their views and debate the presented seminar. The other students will be expected to comment and challenge the group’s work with the help of existing literature. Another step, would be to involve the invited speakers into those discussions, but for now, I would need to rethink about how I could implement this step?

Thanks all for an inspiring day! and looking forward to see you again tomorrow and remember to be Wiki-Wiki! so click here. 

A bigninner's reflections on Blogging:

As novel blogger, I think this is actually a very simple and powerful way of communication. In a way it feels more informal than what I anticipated. A blogg invites quickly to intensive discussions which I have not experienced earlier. A strength that I did not foresee is the large flexibility and the possibility to use the blogg as a dynamic source of information that can be constantly updated via the fantastic "RSS". I love this function!
An other thing is the feedback, this is something that will definitely try to implement in the near future on line teaching.
so see out there...!

Inlämningsuppgift 1a:

Idag består min undervisning bade av föreläsningar och seminarier samt att organisera kurser. Undervisningen ingår i läkarprogrammet eller är doktorandkurser inom infektionsbiologi-programmet och motsvarar ca. 30 timmar per termin. Oftast består grupperna av ca 10-30 studenter. Jag brukar se till att deltagarna får diskutera uppgifter parvis eller i mindre grupper och jag ger feedback och stöd vid behov.