learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Kaido Kikkas et al.
Occasional guests participating in the weekly chat (1-2 per course) are very stimulating for the
sense of community (e.g. ELNM 2009 had a lawyer and a Microsoft specialist) Creating a
dedicated learning community rather than stressing a teacher-student dichotomy is crucial to
success. Our experience shows that the weekly chat sessions are crucial here – these should not
be neither just formal exchanges or just chit-chats, but a mixture of both with a strong accent in
the 'we'-aspect, or community building. Also, these sessions, when directed skillfully, can have a
large impact on students' self-study motivation and skills. A good enough proof was the end of the
SSNC 2009 course, with students grumbling during the last chat session: 'What the heck will we
do on Wednesday nights from now on?'.
5. Conclusions
In this study, we applied action research approach and framework analysis method to make sense of
our experiences with open courses in 2008-2011 (more than 20 courses at three different higher
education facilities in Estonia). Our analysis shows that open courses have evolved beyond the phase
of experimentation by few enthusiasts and are a likely candidate to be the next major step in the
evolution of eLearning.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by Estonian Ministry of Education and Research targeted research grant
No. 0130159s08.
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