ONL202 Reflections blog

  Designing for online and blended learning I write this blog form a little bit of an outsiders perspective, since I have not been teaching for the last couple of years, and have -thankfully- missed all the stress of the suden move to online teaching. I also write it as a way to remind my future self, when I am back to teaching hopefully next term, where I should put my efforts, since I believe that online and blended learning have arrived to stay. My imaginaries of online teaching were a little bit like the photo above. A tidy space with everything you need around you, including a warm cup of coffee and a lovely background to create some sort of cosiness for the students to feel warmly welcome to our homes. On the other hand, I imagined a group of students engaged with their computers, eager to try new online platforms and tools, more active in the class since the online space might mitigate fears of judgement and shyness. And specially, I imagined lots of open cameras showing student

Learning communities and WIASN    Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash The discussion about learning in communities in our ONL 202 group has been very enriching. I have learned lots and hope to apply those reflections on my teaching practice, including the great online tools available for brainstorming and producing collaborative outputs. We actually came up with a very handy list of tips for educators who want to apply collaborative and community learning activities, so I may suggest to take a look at the work of group 3 :)  For this blog, however, I would like to reflect on what I thought was a support online network, rather a community of practice that has helped me to understand and navigate the academic world as an early career researcher and a latina woman. I am referring to a large Facebook group, called Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN). The group, with over 10.000 members, has become a safe space for finding support to navigate tricky job-academic related situations, an