Engineering education teachers' pedagogical use of digital media shown in projects carried out in a Higher education course: Learning in Digital Media

Paper i proceeding, 2011

This paper tells about experiences and conclusions of giving a higher education course - Learning in Digital Media - to teachers at Chalmers University of technology. The main question of interest in this paper is how engineering education teachers choose to use IT with pedagogical aims to support teaching and student learning. The learning objectives in the course Learning in digital media is to give opportunity to the participating teachers to develop their courses and create stimulating learning environments in order to support their teaching and student learning. In the course the teachers work with individual projects using digital media with pedagogical purpose to support student learning. Several examples of the use of digital media and online pedagogy, from teacher projects, are shown and discussed in this paper from a pedagogical point of view. The teachers' pedagogical thoughts concerning teaching and learning using IT are highlighted. The overall focus in this paper is to put light on how traditional teaching and learning and e-learning can support each other in blended learning. The use of IT in higher education is regarded to have potential to support and enhance students' learning by offering additional learning resources, more communication possibilities and engaging virtual, interactive materials. This paper also deals with teacher competencies needed to start to use IT and virtual communication in order to offer good learning conditions to meet the students' needs and desires and to create effective learning environments and course design supporting engaging and active learning among the students. Also teachers' attitudes and emotions concerning technology in teaching and learning are exemplified and discussed. This paper suggests that there is an obvious need to offer academic development initiatives to promote university teachers use of technology in teaching and learning i.e. to enhance teachers' digital competence. There is need for an ongoing dialogue, exchange of experiences and research among teaching staff about how IT and digital media can be used to support teaching and learning. This paper suggests that an interesting area for research, within the area of academic development, is to regard how teachers' choose to use IT and the teachers' pedagogical ideas and thoughts behind their choices of how to use IT in a pedagogically well thought out way that supports learning.