Interesting with names – there is a history behind it and it is tied to the bureaucratic nature of the Norwegian educational system. We wanted a course where we could decide the content based on our current research interests(which hopefully are contemporary issues within the research area :-)) and that this could vary from semester to semester. The only way to do this was to create a generic title that would cover Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Otherwise we would have to literally create a new course (with a new number and title) each time we wanted a new theme. This meant that it had to be approved by the department’s teaching committee, the department board, the faculty teaching committee, the faculty, the university board….. hopefully you get the idea. In fact, just to change from having an oral to a written exam is a long process. Thus, we tried to be as general as possible.

So…. this semester it is a CSCL course! This is timely as the next International CSCL course is being arranged by us here in Bergen in June and hopefully some of you taking the course will find the topic interesting enough that you will want to attend the conference (maybe be a student volunteer). This is an excellent opportunity!