Abstract:

Online-learning has been of growing use in higher education to meet needs of more flexible ways of developing knowledge and skills. However, online modules require careful considerations regarding content and opportunities for participants to reflect and interact with the teacher and the course-material. Teachers also need to support students with high quality material, respond to students´ assignments and encourage deep reflection and discussion concerning course content. Online teaching provides opportunities for participants to access course content in a flexible way [4]. This study regards a higher education online course in gender mainstreaming aiming to support university teachers to integrate a gender perspective into the teaching content. Previous research has demonstrated teachers experiencing gender mainstreaming in higher education as a challenge [2], which is why we in this course used a reflective tool (CoRe) developed from science education research [3] to support participants´ reflection on how to integrate gender aspects. The content for teaching is formulated through Big Ideas and reflected in pedagogical prompts e.g., what is to be learnt and why, as well as possible difficulties in understanding the content. In the online module we developed a G-CoRe (Gender CoRe) where participants reflect on how to integrate gender aspects into the teaching content. The participants accessed the online material in a flexible way, enabling creation of their own learning journey. The course lacks discussion forum and/or online interaction with other participants, components often considered crucial for online learning in developing the students’ abilities to discuss and reflect [1]. However, in this course, the G-CoRe was used to promote critical thinking and reflection in other ways. The design of the G-CoRe includes individual thinking and reflection, feedback from at least one colleague and then a revision of the G-CoRe and a recorded oral reflection. Here, we report findings when five university teachers used the G-CoRe in the online course. The result indicates the G-CoRe as a valuable tool to stimulate reflection and student-centered learning in relation to the integration of gender aspects in the content and teaching. Even if the online course did not include “traditional” discussion forums, the G-CoRe design encouraged reflection among participants. As such, our findings suggest that a reflective tool such as G-CoRe has the potential to stimulate student-centered online learning to overcome some of the challenges that many teachers experience in their efforts to integrate a gender perspective in their higher education practice.

References:
[1] Balaji, M.S. (2010). Student Interactions in Online Discussion Forum: Empirical Research from ‘Media Richness Theory’ Perspective. Journal of Interactive Online Learning. Volume 9, Number 1,
[2] Heikkilä M. and Häyrén Weineståhl A. (2009). Kartläggning och analys av jämställdhetsinsatser vid svenska universitet och högskolor 2000–2009, Stockholm, Delegationen för jämställdhet i högskolan, Rapport 2009:1.
[3] Loughran J., Berry A. and Mulhall. P. (2006) Understanding and developing science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge, Dordrecht, Sense Publishers.
[4] Stec, M., Smith, C., and Jacox, E. (2020). Technology enhanced teaching and learning: exploration of faculty adaptation to iPad delivered curriculum. Technology Knowledge Learning, 25, 651–665. doi: 10.1007/s10758-019-09401-0

Keywords:

Reflection, online course, gender mainstreaming, higher education.