Topic 5 Lesson learnt – future practice

Here we are, eleven weeks and five topics later I’m writing my final blogpost, at least within the ONL202 course. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep going with the blog and having it as some sort of diary for future endeavors in online education. In this last post I’ll use the questions posted on the topic-page in my reflection.

What are the most important things that you have learnt through your engagement in the ONL course? Why?

There are many things I’ve had to form an opinion on and assimilate since the start of this course. From my (actual) digital literacy, how I feel about the size and contents of my digital footprint to actively reflecting on how I feel, think and act in the roles of student, teacher and facilitator in an online environment.
The single most important thing that I’ve learnt during this course is the importance of social and emotional interaction between teacher and student but also student – student, especially in an online environment. This became evident after Topic 2 and 3 where we as a group made the leap from stage 2 (counter-dependency & fight) to stage 4 (work & productivity) according to Susan Wheelans 4 stages of group progress. It´s not like we had fights or big disagreements but during Topic 1 and especially Topic 2 I didn’t enjoy the meetings and I had to force myself to try to take a somewhat active roll which is a hard thing for me to do in many situations. In an unknown group situation and especially if the goals (in ONL, the Topics) are vague, I need to have time to observe and reflect before I feel comfortable in “taking a step forward”. Sometime around when we started working with topic 3 the mood changed, we started to talk to each other as friends and in a more open way, not just about the topic, what was on the news, our jobs but also about private things, how we felt about things and family issues etc. Since then I’ve been looking forward to the group meetings and I think the work we did after that, especially during topic 3 was really, really good.

How will your learning influence your practice?/ What are you going to do as a result of your involvement in ONL?

Right now several of us at the school of music in Piteå are in the middle of developing/migrating parts of our regular programs and several existing courses into online courses. The ONL course together with parts of the development program I’m participating in has so far been very inspirational and contributory in the development of these programs/courses so one could say that it’s already underway regarding influencing.

What are your thoughts about using technology to enhance learning/teaching in your own context?

This hasn’t changed. In my field you have to be (or at least try to be) friends with technology, whether it’s hardware or software. Like I wrote in my last blogpost, in the future I will think twice about blaming technology (“wrong platform, bad software etc.”) for badly designed courses and course-elements, or just using the wrong technology for the task(s) at hand.

Postlude (or perhaps interlude)

In my very first post I wrote: “In writing this blog I’m going to try something different to what I would normally do which is: I’m going to try to ”let the words flow” and edit as little as possible. When I’m writing to a student, a colleague, for a project and so on I am always second guessing myself and seem to dissect sentences far too long so that what I write almost always becomes (in my eyes) as correct as it can get, but a bit boring and uninspiring”

Reading through all of my blogposts and thinking about the process of writing them (or should it say “typing”?) I still don’t think my writing is as “flowing” as I would like it to be and yes, I’m still second guessing myself. ..But not nearly as much as I used to.

/Björn

References

Susan A. Wheelan (2005). Creating effective teams