1 Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, University of Oulu P.O.B. 2000, 90014 Oulu, Finland
e-mail: Eila.Jeronen@oulu.fi
2 S. Anttila-Muilu, Oulun Lyseon lukio Kajaaninkatu 3, 90100 Oulu, Finland
Abstract
During the last decade, there have been large changes in the society and the school system in Finland. This article briefly describes the curriculum for upper secondary school geog-raphy, to be introduced by the st of August 2005. In the new curriculum, communication, media skills and technology are listed as important teaching methods. The article also offers a specific set of pedagogical and assessment strategies found to be successful in distance education in Geography. Distance education offers students an opportunity to have upper secondary level education also in small rural village schools, which do not have teachers in all the required subjects.
Key words: multiform teaching, net-based learning environments, geography education Introduction
Finland launched a special information society strategy in 1995 (Ministry of Educa-tion, 1995) in which the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching and learning figured as a key to accelerating the progress in the chosen direction (Sinko and Lehtinen, 1999). In 1999, the Ministry of Education updated the ICT strategy. This was a continuation of earlier governmental efforts to steer national growth towards an information society through learning and education.
The main concept in the programme was a ´learning citizenship society` (Ministry of Education, 1999). The third strategy was published in 2004. This Information Society Programme can be divided into three categories: knowledge, content and the operating environment. The programme is targeted to all players in the educa-tion, training and research fields and it concerns all citizens as users or producers of information society services. The programme is geared 1) to develop all citizens’
information society knowledge and skills, 2) to enable educational institutions to use information and communications technology (ICT) in a versatile way in their activities, 3) to establish ICT-based procedures in education, training and research and 4) to promote social innovation through the use of ICT (Ministry of Education, 2004).
The ICT strategies have affected the processes at schools. All schools have an Internet connection, and systematic staff development has started. Innovative
projects are running and in the best cases, they are a natural part of school life (Niemi, 2003).
The curriculum for upper secondary school geography
In the Finnish national curriculum for upper secondary school geography, the main goal is that a student becomes aware of the relationship between the human being and nature, and understands the earth to be a changing and diverse living environment.
The students should acquire a readiness to analyse regional environmental questions, and to find solutions in accordance with sustainable development. Geographical education integrates topics from both natural and social sciences. There are two obligatory courses to be studied: The Blue Planet and The Common World. The Blue Planet course consists of Physical Geography. The content includes topics such as Geographical Thinking, Position of the Earth in the Solar System, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Weather and Climate, Changing Topography of the Earth, Vegetation Zones, Landscapes through Maps and Figures. The Common World course consists of cultural geography. Its main topics are The Nature of Cultural Geography, Popula-tion, Natural Resources, Primary Production and Environment, Industry and Energy, Traffic and Interaction, Landscapes and Land Use, and Globalisation and Sustain-able development. In addition, there are two optional courses named The World of Hazards and Regional Research. The first course includes threats and risks, both from natural phenomena and the action of human beings. The second one includes Cartog-raphy, GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and regional geographical research by the students. In upper secondary level geography, the areas to be evaluated are the development of geographical thinking skills, mastery of geographical concepts, stating arguments for conceptions, and skills to observe regional dependences. The skill to interpret, evaluate and use geographical information, and presentation and co-operational skills are also to be evaluated (Opetushallitus 2003).
Distance education in Oulun Lyseon Lukio School.
The geographical courses studied in Oulun Lyseon Lukio School are Natural Geography, Human Geography, Geography of Hazards, and Regional Geography.
One course consists of about 30 hours of teaching during the six week period. The lessons are each usually 75 minutes long. There are two 75-minute lessons and one lesson of 45 plus 75 minutes during each course week. Therefore, the student has three geography lessons in a week. This is the situation in normal contact teaching in Oulun Lyseon Lukio School.
In distance education, there are two possible teaching approaches. The first is called multiform teaching, which is used at Tyrnävä and Ylikiiminki satellite schools.
The teaching can be distance teaching all the time, it can partially take place in a normal contact situation – meaning that the teacher and the students are in a same classroom at the same time. Usually this happens only once during the course when the students commute from Tyrnävä and Ylikiiminki to Oulu. The teacher, however, has the possibility to drive either to Tyrnävä or to Ylikiiminki to give the class and meet the students in one of the satellite schools and have the videoconferencing going
on to the other satellite school. Of course this is possible only if the teacher only has a few lessons to be taught overall, because it takes from 35 to 45 minutes to drive from Oulu to Tyrnävä or to Ylikiiminki. Many teachers do like to drive to the satel-lite schools whenever it is possible, and the students seem to especially appreciate it.
They feel that the teacher is ready to make some efforts for them. They appreciate that the teacher really would like to get to know them.
The second approach follows the principles of distance teaching more closely.
It takes place within the Northern Ostrobothnia Distance Teaching Network (NODiTeN; Pohjois-Pohjanmaan etälukioverkosto in Finnish). The teaching and learning environment needs technical devices such as computers, phones and maybe videos. The system is close to virtual schools, but is more effective, because there is a closer connection between the student and the teacher. In a virtual school the teacher and the students really do not meet or see each other at all. But in the Northern Ostrobothnia Distance Teaching Network, there are usually two 100-minute vide-oconferencing sessions per course. During those two lessons, the students and the teacher see each other, and can communicate through videoconferencing. Basically, the sessions have started to resemble normal classes where the difficult parts of the course are discussed.
The course outlines are presented on the net in a learning environment called Optima Discendum. Optima provides teachers with possibilities to choose the desired type of Web-based learning and decide how to implement it. The workspace is a mode in the environment in which the teacher carries out their training or project.
In principle, an environment can contain any number of workspaces. The workspace always has an owner who has administrative rights to the workspace. The supervisor’s role is to create an operational environment in which the venture (or learning activity) is carried out. The supervisor can assign users to the environment as workspace members. A user with access rights to one or more workspaces is called a member.
Each user automatically has their own folder, created when the user account is created or imported into the environment. The user’s personal folder is an environment-level function, and therefore available regardless of workspace membership, as long as the user has an account in Optima. Through the desktop, the user can conveniently and centrally administer the messages, documents, annotations, bookmarks, and settings in the environment. Messages and documents can be easily located using a search engine (Discendium, 2002).
There are discussion forums and working environments for each course, which contain the goals and specific guidelines and materials needed for the course. The type of the course material depends on the teacher. Sometimes the materials are similar to virtual schools in that everything is included. However, this is not neces-sary as the students may still have textbooks and other resources. The students have given feedback that the material provided should be clear and precise. There is so much information dealing with geographical issues, that the basic guidelines and the core material were valued as more important than the amount of information.
The teachers’ job is thus to sieve the core material as clearly as possible. Back to the basics is the guideline for a distance teacher.
A variety of methods are necessary to assess student performance and learning.
Evaluation and assessment is an integral part of the teaching-studying-learning processes. Formative evaluation is embedded in activities and interaction between students and between students and teachers. The teachers use the information gath-ered to make corrections and changes in the study plan. Teachers can also use e-mail, bulletin boards, chat rooms, self-evaluation and product evaluation for assessment.
At the end of the course the students have summarised evaluation tests. This evalu-ation is based on numerical values. Teachers also make a summarised evaluevalu-ation of the students in the form of the final grade. The students´ progress measured using formative assessments throughout the course is taken into account in the final evalu-ation. Also this is given in numerical form.
Conclusion
Developing ICT with distance education as a part of it in schools is a long process.
It requires an effective technical infrastructure, psychological and cultural changes in teaching and learning. It seems that schools are in the middle of this process.
Teachers do not resist implementing ICT, but it seems that they are not completely convinced of its advantages. In order to fully utilize ICT, they require better learning materials and digital content in Finnish. In addition, the teachers have problems integrating ICT in the curriculum, and they feel that the schools lack both effective technical facilities and support to maintain these environments (Niemi, 2003).
However, distance education is becoming an important component in all educa-tional sectors in Finland. In this article, some pedagogical features have been presented that are good to consider when teaching on distance education. In order to create a rewarding online learning experience, evaluation needs to be combined with an effective learner-centred pedagogy. When teachers set clearly defined learning goals and expected outcomes, develop criteria for evaluation, and use multiple methods of assessing learning and teaching, they promote an environment that is conducive to learning. By providing activities and leaving time for discussion, a dynamic community of learners can be constructed.
Finally, course organization strategies, such as scheduled activities and messages from students and teachers form an integral part of the learning experience. Ongoing communication and interaction is imperative to support students and help assess-ment and evaluation made by teachers. That way distance education can also be a good personal experience and give stimulation and interaction as much as traditional contact teaching in a classroom.
References
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