Background

The need to improve quality in VFU has been highlighted in Bodén et al (2006) who call for better coordination when distance students are assigned to their trainee posts. This report highlights the need to improve communication between teachers in institutes of higher education, co-ordinators, practical instructors and students. These needs are reflected in the experiences of campus based students ineach of the partner institutions in this project. A key question is how can we decrease the distance between the student, the teacher educator and the activities and teachers involved in the VFU? This project aims to contribute to the process of reducing the distance between those involved in this aspect of teacher education.

Process based assessment involves students starting by documenting prior knowledge, reflecting on the course goals, interpreting these goals in ways which make them more concrete and documenting the results of their reflections in ways which make their learning visible. These processes are supported through dialogue with peers, practical instructors and teacher educators. Such experiences have the potential to raise awareness on the part of student teachers of the assessment process in general. This project explores the use of 'blended learning' involving a variety of social media and ICT tools to support such communication, e.g. digital portfolios, blogs, wikis, video papers and video conferencing. In essence, blended learning can be seen as the well planned and thoughtful integration of face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences, the real test being the effective integration of the face to face and online learning experiences so that we are not simply adding on to the current dominant approach or method (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004).

The project aims to strengthen the quality of the students’ learning processes concerning teaching skills and abilities as they are described in “examensordningen” for teacher education (SFS 2006:1053). Furthermore it aims to support students in developing their abilities in self evaluation in order to illuminate their knowledge in relation to course goals and to become reflective practitioners.

In doing so the project builds on prior work and experiences at the partner institutions:

At Umeå Universuty, the Faculty Board funded an pilot project to develop ICT supported process based assessment during 2006-07. The aims of the project were to evaluate different ways of using ICT supported process based assessment, to explore the possibility of replacing paper-based files, to use ICT to document the VFU and to develop a system of mentoring.

At Karlstads University, a pilot project was carried out with the explicit purpose of closing the gap between campus and VFU, supported by a variety of ICT applications and through the development of a revised VFU-handbook.

Through a recent project at Linköping University, "reflective dialogues" (lärande samtal) have been used as a means for trying to tie together theory and praxis for students doing VFU during their third and last course of AUO. Focus days have been arranged in connection with VFU visits by teacher educators from campus at schools where one or more students are involved in VFU. During the focus day, dialogues are held in which teacher instructor coordinators participate as co-tutors. The positive results from these reflective dialogues and focus days have inspired the development of pilot development projects through which the process of sharing the students’ documentation as well as handling the communication is supported through blended learning using a variety of ICT-tools.

References

Bodén, A., Gustafson, L., Jacobson-Holm, B. Olsson, M and Sundberg, N (2006) VFU I programutdildningar på distans, Karlstads universitet.

Garrison, R. D. and Kanuka, H. (2004) Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education, The Internet and Higher Education, 7, 95-105. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2004.02.001