As a teacher, I like teaching and learning activities (TLA) that becomes somewhat more personal compared with giving a lecture, i.e. meeting students in seminars (smaller groups) or supervising master thesis students. Hence, I have had some resistance to embark online/blended learning. When acquainted with the concept “Flipped class room” I started my journey towards blended learning. I could reduce traditional lectures and instead make recordings, refer to videos, and put more emphasizes on discussions in follow-up seminars.
The “game changer” for education, i.e. the spread of the corona virus, forced me to advance into the field of online learning. I was lucky to join the ONL community and its introductory course. The course guided me to new approaches and tools, supporting online education and learning, and possibilities to apply and discuss them within an ONL-group (no 8). As a result, or a consequence, I see many more options and possibilities to transform traditional education to online, which I before could not apprehend. However, online education and learning is not, in my perspective, a solution to all kind of TLAs, but can in many ways improve both learning and efficiency.
From the reflections above, it was also very useful to know about the concept “Community of Inquiry” (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013) and the more concrete Five-stage model (Salmon, 2013). I especially found the emphasis on socialization when designing a blended/online course interesting. It is relative easy to change a traditional course to become online, for example using recordings, communicate via Zoom, and managing all assignment and study material via a Learning Management System (LMS). But to make students committed and motivated becomes another kind of challenge, than meeting students, or students meeting students, in a campus course.
The concept “Scaffolding for learning” (Salmon, 2014) seems to be important, more than I believed before study the literature and videos in topic 4. I realize now, when designing an online/blended course that I need to go deeper into activities that promotes students and teachers to socialize, as a fundamental prerequisite for commitment and motivation. This is probably the main challenge to obtain a successful online course, i.e. where students (and teachers enjoy) the course and obtain the intended learning outcomes. I am not sure how practicing socialization in an online course, but hopefully further exploration will take me, and my students, there J
References
