Pedagogical Path - Development task

Development task

As a specialist in internationalization, I want to strengthen of our student's global competences and give them tools to so that they can show proof of their global competence to working life. I want to help them stand out.

Vesa N was was excited about the idea, and we decided to put our wise heads together and work towards creating the Centria Global Competence Open Badge. Here are Vesa's reflections and ideas about the badge.

The badge we are planning is intended for students who have participated in student exchange or who have done a work placement abroad.

Students acquire a wide variety of skills during their stay abroad and the most clear ones are these:

Language skills  in a real context

Cultural understaning and tolerance

However, there are many hidden competences that students acquire that are harder to put a finger on. CIMO and demos Helsinki have made a study to identify the needs of working life, and see if they match with the skills that students acquire during their studies or work abroad. There were many matches, and we will use this study, together with other facts as a basis for our work.

We will create Centria Global Competence Badge for students that will give them a badge where their abilities, skills and competences will be presented in a virtual format. To obtain the Centria Global Competence Badge, the student must participate in a training course that will place before, during and after their exchange. This course needs to lead to ECTS credits.
They will present Centria at the foreign University and participate in a debriefing when they have returned.

Students will be encouraged to be international tutors or to participate in International study sessions at Centria to tell about their own experiences abroad. This will help Centria increase the knowledge among students about the benefits of exchange studies or work placements.

An Open badge must be accepted by the receiver in order to be activated. The challenge is to make the Centria Global Competence Open badge attractive for the students. It is also incredibly important to make the Centria Global Competence Open badge known to working life. They need to know what it is. Why students have received it. What skills they have obtained to get the Badge.

We will work together with i.a. Centria's communications department to get an attractive graphic character to the badge, how to communicate about the badge to working-life etc.  We will also need to get the training course into the study plan, so that we can help students get added value of the exchange. We will also need to plan the training course and include exchange studies as a course folder in our learning environment (Optima).

 This will be a team effort and I am looking forward to the results! I see a lot of developing and work ahead :-)

Self-evaluation of online pedagogy

Based on the self-assessment and peer assessment I think the learning environment in blogger works well but I think adding a few pictures would not harm. The online pedagogy environment is a self-study environment and learning how to add new feeds, interaction and making the environment appealing is something that one can keep on doing.

It has not been hard for me to do the online pedagogy course. Many of the themes have been familiar to me but some technical features were new. E.g. RSS feeds was new and a very handy tool. I have also made this learning environment a bit broader by adding some useful links and blogs I like. They are there so I don't forget their existence but naturally also there to bring your attention to them. Especially mobiluck (mobiiliopetusteknologia lukiolaisen arjessa) is something I want to learn more about in a near future.

Oppimisen ihanuus. (stridersuomi.com)

I have given the tasks some good thought and have tried to add some new ideas and reflections into my older thoughts and reflections done during my Vocational Pedagogy studies. The reader can find quite an extensive PLE when opening the links to previous posts.

Peer evaluation (received)

Graduation is so near now. 

I received my peer evaluation today from my friend who has studied in the same iVet group. We have had the same journey and I am very happy that she did the evaluation of my online pedagogy content. The evaluation was constructive, encouraging and analytical - something that helps me when panning my next blog. The citations are sentences from the peer evaluation that I will comment in black.

My peer evaluator correctly states that "self-reflection and showcasing her learning and competence in (vocational) teacherhood are the obvious “topics” of her blog." The blog has functioned well as a room for own thoughts. I did not even realize all the benefits of blogging in the beginning. Now I am very glad that I did it openly because now I have my thoughts and opinions out there - it is my portfolio that I can share with others.

All the content and tasks that were required for 3 ECTS in online pedagogy has according to the evaluator been analysed, added or reflected upon. Some supportive material has been added. While studying online pedagogy, I stumbled on many new learning sites. That is what drives me to learn more and encourages me to become engaged in future teaching and learning. 

The evaluator is 100% correct that my  "PLE is not very visual. It is stylish and classy, and in that sense pleasing the eye, but it cannot be stated to be very visual." One picture can say more that 1000 words sometimes and I shall definitely start using pictures and photos in my blog. It is also more relaxed for the reader to read texts with pictures because it gives natural breaks.

"The downside of the blog is that it is not interactive, which is a shame because she has a lot of good topics for vivid discussions in her blog and also interesting viewpoints". I also think it is a shame that there are no comments. One reason is that there are not a lot of readers either! Another point is that people feel worried about commenting other people's texts. You have to have very strong feelings to make an effort and write something. People are also worried about loosing their anonymity. My evaluator has a good suggestion that I totally agree with:  "I think that also in Vocational Teacher Education this kind of forced interactivity should be taken into some of the courses, because they really might be wonderful learning opportunities for the participants." It might feel a bit troublesome in the beginning to get started with commenting, but the collaborative learning outcome is so much better than a report sent to one inbox.

    
    

Peer feedback (given)

I assessed learning tasks related to the online pedagogy course for another student today. He had made his PLE in kyvyt
I was introduced to kyvyt a year ago when starting my vocational pedagogy studies but ended up using another service for my digital portfolio. One reason was that I found it difficult to sign in and secondly, I found blogger easier visually and technically. My own learning curve into blogging can be seen in this very blog.

The assessment criteria is the following:

1. Does the learning environment function correctly?
2. Have you dealt with all the learning tasks?
3. Have you used links and embedded material in a versatile way?
4. Have you considered netiquette and copyright when creating your PLE?
5. Is your PLE visually effective?
6. Is your PLE interactive?
   
   
   
   
   What I like most about reading other teacher candidate's posts is that I always learn something new. It is collaborative learning. I would, however, want to add some interaction to it as well. I liked the learning views post, mostly because it was a good refreshment to learning theories and some interesting notes about special needs in an online environment. 
   
   
   It is always nice with pictures, tables, videos etc. and this blog had many tables. It is also smart to add some useful link to share with others. There was one link to Sanna Ruhalahti's presentation "käsikorjoitus verkko opetukseen" http://www.slideshare.net/SannaRuhalahti/verkkoopetuksen-ksikirjoitus?ref=
   that I found very useful. 
   
   Some visual elements did not work so well in kyvyt. E.g. the topic of the post (link) does not show fully when you open the page. This means, that when you are assessing, you have to remind yourself what you are reading again and again.
   
   
   The blog had included the areas to cover and there were many interesting ideas about my fellow student's professional and spare time activities.
   
   
   I however miss the interaction in the online pedagogy course. A great deal of learning opportunities is lost because there is no chatting going on. It is even difficult to get conversation over who is doing whose peer evaluation. 
   Course tutors: This is something to change in the future. Some synchronous part would be great. E.g. one synchronous task every month in chat