Digital Relational Competence for Higher Education Teachers

Beskrivning

Presentation of reserach project for PhD

Tilläggsbeskrivning

In the post-pandemic educational space, the higher education teacher (universities of applied science and universities) has received added pressure in the demands for digitally mediated education and supervision.
The aim of the present study is to increase higher education teachers’ socio-emotional competence and especially their digital relational competence in order to implicitly increase the quality and efficacy of teaching and the engagement of students. The focus of the study is the teacher-student relationship (TSR)
along with the digital means for it and a collaborative approach to learning about it. The study constitutes curriculum development within professional development.
The project is a professional development intervention using collaborative action research from a sociomaterial viewpoint. Voluntary higher education teachers take part in a course designed to allow them to learn about digital relational competence, experiment with implementing elements in their own courses and then in Nordic forms of research circles analyze their own practices (sayings, doings and relatings) and the course will be further developed through two additional iterations.
Data will be collected in multiple forms to better create mappings of the complex relationships between the human and the non-human in a digitally mediated learning situation. The quantitative and qualitative data will be collected in three iterations of the professional development course offered, intending for data comparison and data integration to attain a fuller (re)presentation of the entanglement of both human and material in digitally mediated learning when trying to become more digital relationally competent as a higher education teacher.
Expected results include increased socio-emotional competence and higher levels of experienced self- efficacy related to digital relational competence.
Keywords: Distance learning, Digital relational competence, Professional development, Student-teacher relationship, Entangled pedagogy
References
Fawns, T. (2022). An entangled pedagogy: Looking beyond the pedagogy – technology dichotomy.
Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7.
From, J. (2017) Pedagogical Digital Competence – Between Values, Knowledge and Skills. Higher Education
Studies, 7(2), 43–50. https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v7n2p43
Wiklund-Engblom, A. (2018). Digital relational competence: Sensitivity and responsivity to needs of
distance and co-located students. Seminar.net – International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning, 14(2), 188–200. Available: https://journals.oslomet.no/index.php/seminar/article/view/2979/2878 [26.02.2022].
Wiklund-Engblom, A., Björkell, J., Backa, L., & Wihersaari, M. (2016). Dimensions of usability as a base for improving distance education: A work-in-progress design study [Paper presentation]. The 5th International Designs for Learning Conference, 91–97. May 17–20, Copenhagen.

Period	9 maj 2023
Evenemangstitel	NoFa9 – The 9th Nordic Conference on Subject Education: NoFa9
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Plats	Vasa, FinlandVisa på karta