Until next time!
The meme above, with David Hasselhoff comfortably surfing
that scary wave, was our group (PBL03) meme. It could not reflect my experience
through the course better. We began timidly sharing ideas and arguments in Microsoft
word (the online version, of course), and ended up recording a podcast! It may
sound a bit silly, but this was a real journey for me.
Although I have helped in designing and teaching blended
learning courses before, I’ve never been in the receiving end of the online
teaching, and it was eye opening. Also, the last time I was involved in blended
learning teaching was back in 2012 (light years from now for the tech
development times). So the course was also an update on online tools and
platforms, they have really improved!
A first leaning lesson is to try not to be
overwhelmed by the online tools and platforms, but patiently work with them until
I learn how to use it. If it takes too much time or hassle, then it is not a
good tool to use in my teaching. Online teaching needs to be fun and easy;
there is no need to make it complicated by expecting the students to use all
sorts of different platforms, sometimes simple is better. I guess the group’s
dynamics will tell me how many or how diverse the online tools need to be for
that particular course. Another aspect here is openness. I support open
learning, and maybe using open platforms, but not every course, subject and
group may be suitable for it, so it is important to asses carefully.
A second lesson is to be aware that online learning
can be boring, so it is time for us as educators to find our creative selves.
Maybe is not your class that is boring, but to be honest, lectures have a tough
time competing with all the distractive possibilities we have at our homes.
Therefore, finding ways to keep students engaged is key. I can think of some
ideas, like breaking the lectures shorter and complement with groups’
discussion, asking for interaction via the chat, sending an emoji or photos of
cats that reflect if the students are following the lecture, or maybe recording
the lecture and making it available before hand, so the online teaching space
can be used for questions, discussions, workshops, etc.
A final lesson I take is the importance of
incentivise my future students to create engage and enjoy their learning community.
Leaning is both and introspective and a social process, and I am afraid the
social aspect of it is often minimised or deemed less important (well, at least
that has been my experience), but it is so important! Talking and listening to
other people’s intake of a given topic is enriching. It enhances your own
learning and gives you extra abilities like listening, building arguments, and
articulating your thoughts verbally or by any other chosen medium. Now, as an
educator, I must be aware that group work, or learning communities, implies a
larger responsibility of each student, but that responsibility can be better
measured by the group itself (I mean, who hand how has contributed and who is
free-riding). ONL202 had a good strategy of having facilitators for the groups,
but I am afraid that is a privilege we will not have in our normal teaching, so
if you reader, have an idea of how to ensure students participation and
learning in their groups, please leave me a comment.
I am confident that having been a student of an
online course will improve my teaching practice, now I am looking forward to get
back to teaching!
Great thoughts Diana! This has been a great journey and we learned a lot. It's true that we could have fun and active online learning. For me, it was also quite nice to realize that the ONL course itself was the main content that we were learning. =)
ReplyDeleteThanks Victor! Good to hear your experience was similar. All the best
DeleteIt was a great pleasure to work with you Diana in BPL#3. You have covered nicely the lessons learned throughout the course. As an educator, I would say that this course was an eyeopener for me as well and as you said, I will consider more metrics now, those that might not look very important before, such as social aspects and being more creative to not bored the student. I liked the idea of sending the recorded lectures beforehand and use the live sessions for discussion and articulating thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the idea of choosing the proper tool in the process, since the main objective here is to build the knowledge, not mastering a sophisticated frustrating tool.
Thanks Maryam, it was a pleasure to meet you and work with you, stay in touch and all the best
DeleteThis is a great reflection of the course and portrays so well the journey. Well done.
ReplyDeleteI love that you put our memes in the blog post. I thought of doing exactly the same :) Reading our groups' blog posts it seems as if the experiences were so similar - but then again, we were literally in this together. It was a pleasure working with you, PBL03./ML
ReplyDelete