My international study journey

I´ll make an international study journey to Australia where my objective is to become familiar with the authentic online learning culture. Place is Australia since there is a lot of understanding about authentic eLearning and it´s used there in many places. I should compare the learning culture there to the learning culture at home in such a way that I am able to compare online learning cultures from authentic point of view. I have chosen to benchmark a couple of similar courses in Finland (non-authentic) and Australia (authentic).

Since the purpose of this benchmark is to learn from authentic online learning culture, I choose to apply nine elements of authentic learning proposed by Herrington in benchmarking (http://authenticlearning.info/AuthenticLearning/Home.html). The other option would have been to benchmark more general themes for reflecting learning cultures.

The nine elements of authentic learning are:

    1.Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life

    2.Provide authentic tasks and activities

    3.Provide access to expert performances and the modelling of processes

    4.Provide multiple roles and perspectives

    5.Support collaborative construction of knowledge

    6.Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed

    7.Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit

    8.Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times

    9.Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks.

I evaluate each of these elements by giving values from zero to three (0-3). If the learning element is fully authentic I give three and if not authentic at all I give zero. I have some remarks under each element what to specially want to look at. I also add some notes of my own to remember later on what basis the value was given.     

My target for benchmark is on so called classroom level (if that is a proper expression regarding online learning). On classroom level student´s and teacher´s views will be noticed.

My benchmarking formula could look like the following:

Authentic elements	Grade visit	Notes	Grade home	Notes
1.Provide authentic contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real life ·       Realistic and real life content
2.Provide authentic tasks and activities ·       Single task and a longer period of time
3.Provide access to expert performances and the modelling of processes ·       links to experts, access to real life
4.Provide multiple roles and perspectives ·       variety of different perspectives
5.Support collaborative construction of knowledge ·       tasks addressed to groups ·       means of communication established
6.Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed ·       discussion forums, written assignments, self-reflections
7.Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit ·       collaborative groups and public presentations
8.Provide coaching and scaffolding by the teacher at critical times ·       support for students when needed
9.Provide for authentic assessment of learning within the tasks. ·       constant and multiple measures