By David Rosenlund
As was the case all over the world, most teachers at our university in Malmö met a new reality as the pandemic hit us in 2020. We were forced to transfer from teaching on campus, to using Zoom in our educational practice. As have been described earlier on this blog we were a group of educators who became curious about how this shift in educational practice could impact our professional role(s), such as the content and quality of teaching and assessment (I am here referring to a different aspect of assessment than Marie address in the previous post). In one initial step, we constructed a questionnaire that was administered to faculty across the university. In this questionnaire, we sought to capture the relationship between aspects of technology, pedagogy and educational content. Some of you might recognize that these are the three aspects that Mishra and Koehler elaborate around in their PACK-model (2006). The model, an extension of Shulman’s (1996) ideas regarding pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), was helpful as it assisted us in framing the questionnaire around three distinct themes. However, we hope to add some useful ideas to the model as this project evolves.
The questionnaire was administered at the end of spring term 2020, after the teachers had been teaching online for approximately three months. Most of the respondents perceived that online teaching was more difficult than teaching on campus. An interesting difference was visible as we analyzed the responses that addressed issues related to the complexity of the educational content (Anderson et al. 2001). When the content was more complex in nature, consisting of concepts and theoretical constructs, teachers said that they struggled. When the educational content was less complex, addressing facts, the difference to on-campus education was not perceived as being as great. Teachers also voiced that they found it difficult to engage in dialogical teaching online, compared with their on-campus teaching. Most difficulties were associated with teaching where practical elements were involved.
When it came to assessment of students’ knowledge, teachers reported difficulties that went in the opposite direction, compared with what was reported regarding teaching. In assessments, it was not so problematic to address more complex aspects of the educational content. The difficulties reported by the teachers was connected to assessment of content with lower degrees of complexity.
There are a number of interesting questions that arise from this pilot study. From my perspective, how the relationship between online education and assessment informs the complexity of educational content and possibilities to dialogue between teachers and students is especially generative.
References
Anderson, L.W Airasian, P.W., Bloom, B.S. & Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A
framework for integrating technology in teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record,
108(6), 1017-1054.
Shulman, L. (1986). Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching.
Educational Researcher. 15(2), 4-14.