The results are described following the main findings explored in the different phases of the research: 1) an initial diagnosis of the characteristics of the participants; 2) description of the courses; 3) the results of applying the Learner Centric Ecology of Resources model; and 4) the students’ perception during the co-design process.
Characteristics of the participants
Before starting the co-design process, we conducted individual interviews with teachers and students in order to identify the main characteristics of the participants. Interviews with teachers were conducted face-to-face and we used Skype for the interviews of the students.
The two professors at the UOC each had over 12 years’ teaching experience and had spent over seven years teaching online educational courses. In the case of the UB, the four teachers each had over 20 years’ experience as university teachers. The six teachers were keen to introduce changes into their courses, mainly to increase student participation and motivation.
The two professors at the UOC considered that they had the necessary skills to incorporate digital technologies into teaching. The two professors of biomedical engineering claimed to have average experience, while the two economics teachers felt that they had little experience. The use of ICT in the courses was diverse. However, in all cases the virtual campus was used to provide students with information. The communication teacher used more applications for communication among students: video-chat, Skype, and so on. However, all the teachers considered that the use of technology was mainly limited to the virtual campus (a Moodle platform) and that it was a challenge to use technology to support self-reflection, collaboration and communication.
A total of 11 students participated in the co-design process, nine of them from the UB and three from the UOC. Participation in the project was voluntary, none of the students had participated previously in a co-design process. The main difference between these two groups is age: the students were aged 19–22 in the case of UB, and 50, 41 and 36 in the case of the UOC. The reason is that the students at the online university (UOC) were part-time workers.
Regarding students’ previous experience using technology as a learning support, the LMS was highlighted as the leading digital tool by most of them. However, the students pointed out other tools that they tend to use to work along with their peers like Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, WhatsApp and mobile devices.
Characteristics of the courses
The methodology used by the teachers before starting the co-design process was different in each course, but in all cases they considered that they were using an approach based on inquiry-learning design.
The tourism course was an online course. Students displayed a self-learning method based on continuous assessment and guided by tracking in the classroom. The principle of the course was to design a case study for students to work on, based on a real personal experience. The research results would be shared with each student in the classroom at various times. Initially, information sources were shared in a collective repository and thematic working groups were created related to the case studies discussed.
The communication course was also online, and was intended to resolve students’ difficulties with moving to the dynamics of the final project that they had to develop to obtain their degree. Students worked in teams to develop projects while also conducting personal research. This course went from a model centred on the teacher-student relationship to a type of network organization, where students and teachers acted as a team sharing responsibilities for tasks and organizing and managing work processes.
The aim of the biomedical engineering course was to obtain clinical information exchange between heterogeneous systems of healthcare information. The teachers designed the course in two phases. In the first, students were distributed into different groups and each one was assigned a problem to analyse. In the second phase, the students were organized into new groups, composed of one member from each of the previous group.
In the economics course different problematic elements were detected. Firstly, there was a significant gap in the students’ reading comprehension, there was also a lack of competence in designing multimedia presentations in both the content and structure of graphical expression. The most remarkable environments involved in this problem relate to the increased work in virtual spaces, considered a positive factor, and therefore less work in the physical classroom.
The course design in the four cases was usually performed with the subject team, but none of the participants had previously participated in a process of co-design. However, all the teachers were interested in learning how to improve the design of their courses collaboratively and how to involve students in the design.
The Learner Centric Ecology of Resources model
We will now describe the results of the resources design phases proposed by Luckin (2010). In the first phase, students brainstormed digital resources to support the learning scenario. The aim was to analyse new ideas and tools and discover what students were used to using. We organized the tools into four sections according to their purpose: searching for information, organizing and managing content, creating and elaborating content, and sharing and collaborating.
Figure 2 shows that the categories in which students were most skilled at finding ICT tools were those used to search for information. The biomedical engineering students named the highest number of tools, for example, database software, Dropbox, videos and other specific software. Students from the UOC had more difficulties finding tools for the different categories. They mentioned only Power Point, virtual campus, WhatsApp, Dropbox and Google Drive. There were some tools that all groups referred to: Google Drive, virtual campus and Dropbox.
The students and teachers worked together to make a list of digital tools for learning in order to see what tools the teacher recommended, what tools were used on the students’ own initiative, and what tools were used for other reasons. We found significant similarities between the UOC and UB groups of students. Databases, bibliographic managers and virtual campus were recommended by the teachers in both groups. Moreover, on their own initiative students used videos (such as Ted talks), Dropbox, Google Drive and WhatsApp. Students from the UOC contributed with other tools, such as digital libraries and the Wolfram Alpha program. The UB group contributed with Prezi, Skype and Adobe Connect. Finally, students from the UB considered that it could be useful for the learning scenarios to use social networks, mobile apps, Delicious, Pinterest and Google Drive. On the other hand, the UOC group mentioned Masterclass, Skype meetings and videoconferences.
The next step (and second phase) was to identify the extent to which these relationships met learners’ needs. We asked the students why they used digital tools at university. In both cases (UB and UOC) students used these tools because their teachers recommended them. Less often, they looked for new tools themselves and used them even though their teachers did not offer them the specific tool.
For the third phase results —the development of scaffolds— we selected the course of biomedical engineering because in it the support of different technological resources was a more important element in the design of the course. Firstly, we will present some of the observations made during the workshops in which students and teachers attempted to negotiate and adjust their learning scenario. In general, the students did not propose many ideas related to digital tools and TEL principles. However, the students found some problems in the teacher’s design that were discussed, although the teacher did not apply the suggestions in the design.
Below are some examples of the discussions that observers noted during the co-design process:
Workshop 9:
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They do not set any proposals, but they discuss some of the design problems. They do not apply any changes
(E.g.: In minute 50, Xavier’s answer was about self-regulated learning).
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Changing some options is taken into account. It seems that video use can be positive for both students and teachers.
(E.g.: In minute 2:36:15, we have:
After seeing some of the discussions recorded during the workshops, we focused, as we noted, on the biomedical case. We must bear in mind that the aim of the biomedical course was to obtain clinical information exchange between heterogeneous systems of healthcare information.
Once the co-design process was completed, the teachers decided to organize the knowledge into several specialized health organizations; therefore, students were distributed into different groups. Each group was assigned a domain of knowledge that they had to work in.
Figure 3 shows the virtual campus where teachers distributed the different fields of knowledge to the groups. We can see that there were seven groups, each with its own knowledge area. Also, we can appreciate how the teachers developed new tools suggested by their students, such as wikis to create virtual spaces where students could interact and build knowledge. Besides the use of wikis, students were free to collaborate using different tools (Fig. 4).
During the course, the students collaborated and communicated using tools as Facebook groups. Although the teachers had not anticipated this use, the students considered that this platform facilitated interaction better than the forum in the virtual campus.
Students’ and teachers’ perception
Once the co-design process was finished and the scenario was implemented, by means of a questionnaire (range 1–5 in Likert scale) we asked the 11 students about different parts of the process and implementation. The aim of the questions was to analyse their opinion of the learning process and the role of the teacher and students.
All students thought that the co-design process was a successful experience, and 100 % of them would repeat it if they had the opportunity. The following graphic shows the students’ opinion of co-design (0 is not satisfied and 5 totally satisfied) (Fig. 5):
Focusing on technology-enhanced learning, we asked the students if they had identified any new potential educational uses of ICT (item B3), and they marked this item with 3.5 out of 5. This would indicate that the students did not learn any new educational uses of ICT during the workshops, however, as we will see, they did report a great deal of knowledge related with ICT in the workshops.
We then asked them (Fig. 6) to which areas they felt they had contributed most, and they mentioned selecting resources and learning tools (6 out of 6), together with choice of working methods.
Therefore, the students reflected that they had contributed a lot to the design context with their ICT uses and experience, but they did not feel that they had learned any new potential educational uses of digital technology. In contrast to the students, the teachers did not feel they had worked very much on the concept of TEL principles.
In general, all highly regarded aspects are related with communication and collaboration between students and teacher. In the open questions, the students indicated that doing autonomous activities increased their learning and made them feel more involved:
“Working on part of the content in a group and explaining it to my colleagues has made me understand the content more clearly. I think it is because if you have to explain something you need to perfectly understand what you are going to present.”
However, there were two items that the students considered they did not develop enough during the scenario: they felt they did not work in depth on some parts of the research work structure: Formulation of research questions and contrasting data.
After the course, the students viewed the teacher as a guide of their learning, not just as a person who transmits content. Moreover, they reported that working with the teacher to design the activities and learning scenarios enhanced their feeling of responsibility for managing their own learning.
The students’ opinion of their own role tallies with the teacher’s opinion. The students felt that their main function was to actively participate in the proposed activities and inquire into the specific topic they were working on. As a result, they considered that they had taken greater control of their own learning process during the entire scenario.