Taking part in ONL 241 was quite a ride!
Topic 1 was the most impactful for me. It was like discovering a whole new world. Even using several digital tools, I was unaware of how I used them. It was just a natural thing of life. However, I learned a lot of new tools and found some difficulties in using and understanding them. This made me realise that I am not as digitally advanced as I thought, even if I am more advanced than my department colleagues.
Topic 3, about collaborative learning, was very interesting. It made me think about how collaborative group work can be. Is collaboration referring to building work for the same end, even if the methodology is to divide the tasks by several group members? Or is it referring to being together, reflecting, and constructing the work together? I am still not sure.
Participating in a PBL group was challenging at times but also highly rewarding. I often find that my perspective differs from others, which makes it difficult to engage in group work. If the discussions were conducted in my native language, I would debate my point of view until I had no further arguments. However, using English makes me less comfortable, and it seems to widen the gap. Nevertheless, this was also an excellent way of practising the use of English.
I must admit, I’m pleased this course is ending. It’s been very demanding, with so many interesting resources to keep up with. However, I’ll miss the Take V’ers (my PBL group). They’ve been great, and I’ve learned a lot.
From this journey, I take with me all the learning, resources and friendship. Tools like Miro, Mural and Unsplash will be extremely useful in the future as well as awareness about copyright and creative commons licences 🙂
I still have a lot of questions, but these are most prevalent: How to build an online course from scratch? How to do a good reflection?
Now, to finalise…
I believe that the course would be more beneficial for me if the sessions were more spaced out over time, so I could make better use of the resources. A PBL meeting per week would be enough to keep in touch and get the work done. I believe that topics could take three weeks, even to do a good reflection on them. Just an opinion…
Comments
Hi Alexandra, it was a good read! I agree that the main takeaways are “learning, resources and friendship” too 🙂
I enjoyed reading your post! I agree that the main takeaways are learning, resources and friendship.
Hey Alexandra, I found your reflective post interesting. I agree with your recommendations regarding the PBL group meetings and the challenges of aligning them with our daily schedules.