My 5 ECTS course Complex IT systems in large organisations start next week. I teach the course with excellent Diane Golay, and we have spent a few hours planning and improving things.

The course is a campus-based course that needs to run online for the second time due to Covid-19. Last year I spent many hours figuring out how to do student-centred learning activities where the students are active but online instead of in the classroom. It worked OK, but there were, of course, areas of improvement.

This year, the department has provided all teachers with technology to improve the teaching work’s digital aspects. Now I have a great microphone on my table, a key light (which is a big lamp with fancy features) and a green screen. I am also very grateful that I have my own office at home and that it indeed is a better room than at work to do this in. My teenage son has promised to help me set this up in an excellent way. This has indeed given me some inspiration!

I constantly work to improve the learning in my course, and one way is to write research papers on the course ideas and evaluate the course. This course is relatively new, and we have only run it three times before. We have just published two papers so far together with Anna Vasilchenko. She does very inspirational research on computer science education. One more paper is written and is in the process of being resubmitted this spring.

You can read more about the course and the teaching in it here:

Vasilchenko, A., Cajander, Å., Daniels, M., & Balaam, M. (2018, October). The self-flipped classroom concept: Underlying ideas and experiences. In 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-9). IEEE. The paper can be found at this link.

Vasilchenko, A., Cajander, Å., & Daniels, M. (2020, October). Students as Prosumers: Learning from Peer-Produced Materials in a Computing Science Course. In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-9). IEEE. The paper can be found at this link.