During and after my graduate studies, I have taken many different courses in different formats and shapes. Almost all of these courses have been rather ‘typical’ in that they involved people (i.e., students and teachers) who are physically co-located and adopted standard pedagogical tools (e.g., reading & writing assignments, classroom discussions, presentations etc.). When I first saw the course description of Open Networked Learning (ONL), it grabbed my attention due to its unorthodox structure and approach. Participation to the course is fully on virtual basis and it entails facilitators (rather than teachers) for those who want to learn more about this subject. Intrigued by this novelty, as well as motivated by my innate interest in learning more about teaching/learning in the virtual realm, I took a deep breath and dived into the adventure.
Our first week was called Connecting Week. As far as I understand, the main idea is to give us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the flow/content of the course and with our group mates. After all, it makes perfect sense to spend some time on connecting when the course is primarily about networks, right? After a general welcoming webinar on September 21, we had our PBL Group meeting on September 22. With the aid of our facilitators, we started to get more familiar with what kind of tasks are awaiting us in the weeks to come and what are the tools we should/could use to cooperate while fulfilling these collective tasks. As it turns out, first week’s task was to prepare a joint presentation of our group where we were given full room to be creative. Thus, it was up to us to figure out how to present our group, in terms of both its individual members and its collectivity.
As with all new ventures, it will probably take some time to figure out the most efficient way to cooperate and exert our collective efforts. For me, one of the main challenges was the novelty of the platform where we are supposed to coordinate our group work. In my daily work, I mostly use emails and Microsoft Teams to stay in touch with my colleagues and cooperators. One advantage of these tools is that I can get immediate notification when someone sends me an email or posts something on Teams. When it comes to ONL202 course, this is different since I need to go to the course webpage or to our common Google Drive to check if there is anything new. I am not saying this is less efficient than the alternatives I am used to. Yet, it is different and therefore requires the adoption of a new habit.
All in all, I am quite happy with our groups collective work for the connecting week. Of course, the usual counterfactual (“it could have been better” ) is always there. But I am pretty confident that we will work more efficiently and effectively on the upcoming assignments as we move along with this course.
During the next two weeks, we will work on Topic 1 which is called Online Participation and Digital Literacies. Sounds interesting and I am already looking forward to working with my group mates on this.
