As part of our weekly meetup tasks, we have been using tools that in my mind, expect a sense of sharing and listening: The Circle -…

In this reflection, I will be using my breakdown of the 7 “Implications for Practice” as discussed in “Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment” by Jane E. Brindley, Christine Walti, and Lisa M. Blaschke (2009…

To be honest, when I first read the topic headline I started preparing a coffee and got ready to share my life story, but I soon learned that wasn’t it…Or was it? Little did i know that openness and sharing was already a big part of my life. From my …

When the discussion around what “open” really means in an educational context, I found myself constantly renegotiating (and admittedly grappling) with my own understanding of it. Open education and Open Educational Resources (OER) to me have always (sort of) been synonymous with “free”. Right? In South Africa (SA), the concept of Open Access was only […]

Before I fell in love with design and academia, my first love (which is still present) is the world around me. I take delight in simply…

“Let me tell you why you’re here. You are here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it.” – Morpheus…

An informal intro In academia there is a real problem with imposter syndrome, and that is exactly where I found myself almost 4 weeks…

This is young Melissa in her happy place – in front of the fire with the family dog, Karl. Being an 80s kid, my sister and I didn’t grow up with computers or the internet. Research for school assignments meant going to the library, finding a book, booking it out for a little while and […]

 1. Who are you as an individual in the digital age, and what characterizes your journey so far?Online I have been/can be many people. I have run multiple social media pages for companies across platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Th…

This week we first got to know our PBL groups and it was very informative and fun, it was really nice getting to see everyone’s different bits of their worlds, I enjoyed putting together the video and seeing and hearing everyone’s interesting facts and…

I am from South Africa and in this tumultuous time in history, it is a great opportunity to be able to contribute to a course that focus on being connected in a networked environment with fellow learners to share and learn. ONL221 means a great deal to me as it is important to be connected […]

It has been a busy month since I wrote my first blogs. It feels like only a week or two ago that I typed out those pages. And how much as changed since then. It appears the world is moving rate of several wow’s an hour. It feels like it hasn’t stopped….