Prior to writing our thesis, a course at the Royal institute of technology allowed alternative methods to present our knowledge. We decided to create a podcast. During the process of creating the podcast we started discussing how the examiner would assess this compared to our peers creating written solutions. This resulted in three questions that later became our research questions: How does written versus podcast affect the grading from teachers and teacher students? What parameters should be considered when creating a task for written and podcast? What is the general view among teachers for using pupil-generated podcasts? To answer these questions, we created an experiment and a survey. The experiment aimed to answer the first two questions and gave us the following results: by only altering the format between podcast and written, our participants assessing the podcast were more keen to give forward and comprehensive feedback, while our participants assessing written focused more on what was missing and commented on small details. The second research question was answered by analyzing the task we created for our experiment. We found that source integration is needed to reduce confusion. The survey implies that no teachers were against using pupil-generated podcasts but STEM teachers were more picky on how and when it can be implemented. We hope that this thesis inspires further research in the relatively new area of pupil/student-generated podcasts. / Innan vi skrev vårt examensarbete tillät en kurs vid Kungliga tekniska högskolan alternativa metoder för att presentera vår kunskap. Vi bestämde oss för att skapa en podcast. Under processen med att skapa podcasten började vi diskutera hur examinatorn skulle bedöma detta jämfört med våra kurskamrater som skapade skriftliga lösningar. Detta resulterade i tre frågor som senare blev våra forskningsfrågor: Hur påverkar skriftligt kontra podcast bedömningen från lärare och lärarstudenter? Hur kan en uppgift skapas för att fungera för både podcast och skriftlig bedömning? Vad är den allmänna uppfattningen bland lärare kring att använda elevgenererade podcasts? För att svara på dessa frågor skapade vi ett experiment och en enkät. Experimentet ämnade till att svara på de två första frågorna och gav oss följande resultat: genom att bara ändra formatet mellan podcast och skrift, hade våra deltagare som bedömde podcasten mer fokuspå att ge forward feedback och mer övergripande feedback, medan våra deltagare som bedömde skriftligt fokuserade mer på vad som saknades och kommenterade på smådetaljer. Den andra forskningsfrågan besvarades genom att analysera den uppgift vi skapade för vårt experiment. Vi fann att ett bättre arbetssätt gällande källor behövs för att minska förvirring. Enkäten antyder att inga lärare var emot att använda elevers genererade podcasts menSTEM-lärare var mer kräsna på hur och när det kan implementeras. Vi hoppas att detta examensarbete inspirerar till ytterligare forskning inom det relativt nya området: elev- och studentgenererade podcasts.

This case study, executed in school network driven by a private foundation for underprivileged children in Cambodia, provides a perspective from a unique situation of technology enablement in an environment with a predominantly instructivist teaching tradition.   The said environment is strongly influenced by private sector donors with strong constructivist traditions and expectations. The environment is thus unique in the sense that a relatively asset rich environment, with expectations of 21st century pedagogical skills, is transported into an asset poor environment that was/is strongly rooted in instructivism. The case study thus give a perspective on if technology itself is a possible solution for better teacher education/educational delivery, or if the underlying pedagogy first needs to be evolved to allow web-based platforms and tools to be fully leveraged.     In the specific environment being studies, teacher in-service training plays a larger role than formal teacher qualifications, and peer-to-peer, in-person, learning is the cornerstone of development (offline connectivism). Rather than changing the way the teachers learn, there should be opportunity in further strengthening the current practices of communities. Connectivist MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) do provide the community engagement and together with technology mediated professional learning platforms there should be opportunity to provide enhanced support for teachers’ education.   The two main hurdles to overcome, beyond functioning technology assets and web access, are teachers own comfort levels with technology platforms, as well as provision of platforms that support local language options. The comfort level with technology is important to address as, assuming technology and web access works, the openness and lack of control in a web environment is in direct contradiction to instructivist teaching. Unlocking the potential of the web requires that teachers are comfortable with the web itself and also truly support inquiry based learning over didactic teaching, and that they have the skills to help children navigate the openness of the web.   As economies shift towards becoming knowledge societies, collaborative problem-solving and navigation to knowledge are skills of increasing in importance, relative static knowledge recall that was previously viewed as value adding. This case study contributes to pedagogical theory and in particularly gives one more perspective on the shift from instructivist to constructivist teaching as a pre-requisite for capturing the power of the internet, and the shift to leveraging networks in a connectivist pedagogical approach. This case study also calls out the need for evolved frameworks to better describe technology mediated learning in least developing country environments. The case study also provides contribution to practice to technology mediated teacher education as it specifically addresses some of the opportunities in strengthening the support to teacher education in least developed countries.

No description available.