Course Examples

Here you can find some examples of different courses on both the bachelor and master levels of the education:

Courses in Methods for System Design, Practical System Design and Systems in Organisations – Bachelor

This course is a mix of lectures and presentations, group exercises, group presentations (results from the students’ casework), and guidance of the groups for their case and presentation. The first part of the course will give a theory-supported method basis, and the second part will give an opportunity to acquire this method basis in practice. To support reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action the student will keep a personal portfolio throughout the course.

The casework is built around a collaboration with Aalborg Carnival about developing an intra-/extranet supporting learning a knowledge sharing.

Description and Purpose

The bachelor education in Human Centered Informatics must, among other things, qualify the student to act as a system developer. The unified course in system design methods, practical system design, and systems in organisations therefore aims towards qualifying the participants to be a part of system development projects, to reflect on the challenges of system development, and to take a step back and reflect on their own role in both the organisation developing the system, and the organisation the system is being developed for. Donald Schön makes a distinction between knowing in action, reflection in action, and reflection on action – a distinction accurately describing the three approaches that the students gain through the course. This means that the goal of the course is to:

Make the student capable of planning and completing a system development problem in a company with a focus on designing information technology supporting knowledge organisation and learning in information ecologies
Introduce the student to theories and methods that can be used when planning and completing system development projects
Expand the student’s analytical and theoretical qualifications to analyse and interpret problems connected to development and adoption of ICT-systems in an organisational context

Examples of Casework and Workshops

Workshop 1: is system development and system development competence?
Goal: That the students create a personal portfolio with a description of their own system development experience and their own competence goals.br />Activities: Lectures: Introduction to the course, case, and portfolio. Workshop: Portfolio design
Product for portfolio: Description of own experience with system development and interests in accordance with the current case

Workshop 2: Problem formulation, information and organisation ecology
Goal: That the students gain a basic understanding of ICT in organisations and become capable of describing and analysing organisational practices.
Activities: Lectures: Information and organisation ecology looking at system development. Workshop: Problem formulation and development of a method concept related to a practice analysis
Product for portfolio: Problem formulation and method concept for practice analysis related to Aalborg Carnival

Workshop 3: System thinking: Inside, outside, and on the limit
Goal: That the students describe their case as relation systems on the levels they find relevant
Activities: Presentation on system theory along with presentation a representation forms. Workshop: Rich picture of the case.
Produkt for portfolio: The rich picture of the case with critical annotations.

More Resources

You can red the complete course description here »

You can download slides from the first lecture “Introduction to course, case, and portfolio” with Tom Nyvang here »

Course in ICT, Learning and Collaboration – Master

The course in ICT, Learning, and Collaboration includes lectures, literature studies, technology adaptation, and casework. Furthermore a seminar about Social Software and Web 2.0,was included in the plan as well as the possibility for some students to participate in the 'CSCL-Alpine Rendez Vous' conference. Below you can read more about the course, case examples as well as view some slides used in some of the lectures.

Description and Purpose

The course presents a historic overview of the ICT, learning and collaboration field, and based on this, relevant issues within different areas of use are identified, which the students will explore both in theory and in practice. The course introduces relevant theories and research methods and the students work with cases within different areas of use, some connected to current research and development projects.

Through the course the student will gain a theoretical understanding, knowledge, and experience with analysis, design, and evaluation of systems for learning, communication, and collaboration. Further, it is a goal that the student gains a consciousness about the special problems of different areas of use as wells as gaining concrete experience with adapting ICT for development of these. The course presupposes that the student will work hands on with different systems, including some chosen by the student.

Casework Examples

Case 1: Gymnasium, with a theme of technology in education. There is a special focus on the use of Smartboards in the classroom, spearheaded by a project on a school in Randers. The focus of the case is formulated in cooperation with a teacher on the school.

Case 2: Knowledge sharing in organisations using ICT. Focus could be on both internal and external communication, and an obvious angle would be to look at the use of blogs, wikis, tagging, and similar. How could a self organising network or formal networks in a corporation enhance their knowledge sharing and collaboration through the use of such tools?

Case 3: Currently and application for a Library 2.0 project is being written. The library resources are horribly underused both on workplaces and in the education sector. A major part of this is the lack of direct integration in the work and education environments. Could an increased focus on user involvement, user generated content, social software, and Web 2.0 services help change this situation?

More Resources

You can read the complete course description here »

Download slides from the lecture "Networked Learning – an emerging paradigm? Can we speak of E-learning 2.0?" with Thomas Ryberg here ».

Dowload slides from the lecture "Content Management Systems, Social Software and Web 2.0 apps." technology workshop with Thomas Ryberg here »

This workshop focused on some of the new types of programs, or rather internet services, that collectively are called “Web 2.0”. It started with a short semi-theoretical introduction to the term Web 2.0.