Another journey in the Lost Academics’ life is over, the journey of clearing ONL201. So how was it? Since we during the course talked a lot about emotions, I might as well use emotions to describe my journey through the course. And it turned out to be an emotional roller coaster, with a happy ending. 

To start with, my expectations on the course was a bit vague. It sounded interesting, but I didn’t enter the course with clear expectations. It was more as a state of “Ok, let’s see what this takes me”. I guess I would describe my emotional state as insignificant when entering the course. 

The first emotion that rose during the course, was confusion. What is this? What are we going to do? What are the instructions? What is expected from us? How much “into depth” do we need to go in your presentations/blogs/comments? etc. I was lucky to end up in a really good ONL group – group no 5 – and as time passed my emotional state changed towards curiosity and to some extend excitement.

During topic two I quickly moved into a state of arousal and that was mostly connected to the tool we decided to use for our presentation, creating a podcast. I myself listen to different podcasts and I find the format for learning really interesting and valuable. You can listen to podcasts in so many situations where you otherwise just might “waste” your time on day dreaming or thinking about stupid things. E.g. in the car, while walking/running, on the train commuting to work etc. So, I was really excited to learn how you can produce a podcast. This turned out to be harder than I thought, especially to get everybody in the group to be able to record a pod which was focused, relaxed and interesting to listen to. But it turned out pretty god anyway! By now my emotions had turned to tired and (to some part) exhausted because of the work load of producing the pod. Lucky for me, it was time for reflection week by now. 

Moving into topic three, I was back in a state of arousal feeling motivated to continue and this feeling I kept until the end of the course. So, as I sit here – summarizing my experience – I feel comfortable, pleasant and a little bit smarter (I know, smart is not an emotion…)

There are many things I take with me from this course and that I will use in my own practice in the future, even if I still mostly do “normal” teaching. These are three most important takeaways for me: 

The importance of clear communication – the lack of clear communication became obvious during topic 2 when we were about to shoot the podcast. Everybody had interpreted our instructions a bit different and it took some time to shoot the pod and to edit. We also had to re-shoot one part.

Less is more – one thing I had a hard time with during the course was the digital platform and the different tools we used. There was the web page for the course, then the canvas for this specific course (I can’t figure out the logic of this page!), the group page, Google Drive, paddlet, menti, Zoom, Adobe player for some films, youtube, etc. The list goes on and on and on… I really struggled with the logic in all this and how to navigate. This tells me that a clear and well-structured course page is important. 

The strength in a creative group – yes, it was confusing at the beginning and I guess that’s point with that. But once our ONL-group got hold of this, creativity was nurtured and it was really interesting to see how learning was created and nurtured in your group, leading to different kind of presentations. I think this was the most important learning aspect for me. 

So, am I a better person now? Well, take one of my courses and you tell me…

Over and out
/Viktor