Open Networked Learning – a course, a community and an approach

Abstract: Open Networked Learning (ONL) is an open online course organized by Alastair Creelman (Linnaeus University), Maria Kvarnström (Karolinska Institutet), Jörg Pareigis (Karlstad University), Lars Uhlin (Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University) and Lotta Åbjörnsson (Lund University) in collaboration with colleagues at other universities in Sweden and abroad. The course is aimed at teachers, course designers, educational developers and educational technologists in higher education. It offers opportunities to explore the potential of open networked learning with colleagues from around the world in a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural context and builds on problem based learning.

The course is a truly connected course, which makes use of an innovative digital learning environment particularly designed for the course in WordPress and other social media tools such as Twitter. During the webinar, two of the course organizers as well as former participants shared their experiences, learnings and challenges from organizing and participating in ONL, a course, a community, an approach.

Presenters: Lars Uhlin works as an Educational Developer at Karolinska Institutet and Linköping university as well as Mälardalen university. He has a background in Nursing and has long experience of Health Care Education and Problem-based learning (PBL). For the last 20 years he has worked with educational development in different settings both on the national and international arena. He is also coordinating a national/nordic network for PBL and is a member of steering group for the swedish network for Information Technology in Higher Education (ITHU). Some of Lars’ main focus areas are professional development and educational design within a framework of problem based-, interprofessional- and online learning.

Jörg Pareigis is Head of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Karlstad University, where he is also Assistant Professor in Business Administration and researcher at CTF, Service Research Center. In addition to his role as program manager of the International Business program, he leads the externally funded WISR16 and WISR17 course development projects. The purpose of the projects is to develop open online graduate courses for professionals in the private and public sector based on strategically important research centres at Karlstad University.