Lara´s blog

The role of a teacher Several scientific studies [1] have shown that group work in education can develop students’ communication skills and aid in the process of knowledge acquisition. I personally always enjoyed group work throughout my education. I saw it as a fun and creative experience as well as a way to get a break from the passive learning of listening to a teacher in a classroom. However, I also remember that many colleagues disliked working in groups, and their concerns match well the disadvantages of group work stated by Beede and Masterson[2]: Pressure from the group to conform to the majority opinion. Discussions being dominated by an individual. Members relying heavily on others to do the work. Working in a group is more time-consuming than working alone. Figure 1: Disadvantages of group work [3] But in fact, people are changing, and a study made by in the UK [4] that collected students’ feedback on group work have shown that students recogni

Opportunities and challenges of open online courses As a researcher, starting to give my first steps in online teaching, I felt the need to dig into the various types of online courses and how they work. Apparently, there are many different formats of online courses [1, 2], but the prevalent one is where you register as a student at a university to get access to a web-based platform where you can find lectures and other learning material, submit your assignments and contact and receive feedback from the teachers/other students. They could be either self-passed or have specific deadlines for tests and assignments [3]. Another format of web-based courses that are gaining popularity are the so-called MOOCs, short for Massive Open Online Courses. Today, MOOCs are reaching massive numbers of students. The first MOOC was launched in 2008 by Stephen Downes and George Siemens and it was called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” [4]. Their intention was to “exploit the possibili