This is the fifth and final blogposts that I’m writing as coursework for a teacher training course on open networked learning (ONL). During my academic career I’ve attended a handful of such training courses at several Swedish universities – some were excellent and some, well, not so much. The courses that have positively influenced how I teach are the ones where the instructors practiced what they preached. Courses where the course content was clearly aligned with the learning objectives; courses where the instructors themselves eminently employed the teaching techniques we studied and were encouraged to use in our own classes.

This course on open networked learning started with more than 100 participants making it by far the largest teacher training course I’ve attended (and the first one online). Direct, synchronous contact with the main course organizers was scarce, which made me pay extra attention to all the other ways in which the organizers communicated with the learners: the course website (a voluminous WordPress blog), recorded lectures, webinars (with breakout room discussions), and tweet chats. The organization of the course in smaller Problem Based Learning (PBL) groups with assigned facilitators secured regular contact with fellow learners and an instructor, although the PBL method meant that the teacher took the back seat and rarely intervened in the group’s work (and then mostly by asking open-ended questions). Being on the receiving end of an online course made me more aware of the distant learner perspective and the techniques used by the instructors to overcome the impediments to smooth communication between teachers and students.

When students lack the opportunity to meet and ask questions in the classroom that might feel too trivial for an email and when they cannot small talk with the teacher (and each other) during breaks it is essential to device other methods for building a community of learners. It is also imperative that the written communication is crystal clear. During this course I occasionally felt frustrated with the assigned reading. In a normal course I would have asked the teacher why a certain text had been chosen. But in this online course, there’s wasn’t any obvious occasion to ask about the rationale behind the assignment of, for instance, a frustratingly uncritical paean to PBL. The lesson learnt is that when I teach online courses in the future I will strive for utmost clarity to maintain the enthusiasm of students not driven by intrinsic motivation. I have always believed in the importance of meta-communicating with my students about the course design, the purpose of exercises, and the ideas behind the assigned literature. In online courses, emphasizing this communication even more might help overcome some of the challenges of online learning, build a community of learners, and thus ultimately increase retention rates.

References

Biggs, John. “Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment.” Higher education 32.3 (1996): 347-364.

Brindley, Jane, Lisa M. Blaschke, and Christian Walti. “Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 10.3 (2009).

Kek, Megan, and Henk Huijser. “21st Century Skills: Problem Based Learning and the University of the Future.” Third 21st Century Academic Forum Conference: Facilitating, Fostering, and Harnessing Innovation to Meet Key Challenges of the 21st Century 6.1 (2015).