Studio/bedroom. Photograph © 2021 Esa Ruskeepää.

The fifth and final topic of the ONL 211 course was focused on future practice. What effect has the learning experience from this course had on my development and my own professional practice?

I learned to be more open in my approach as an educator. I learned a lot from my international peers in the PBL07 group. In addition to the discussions and group work exercises, the subtle differences in communication, emphasis and focus taught me a lot and in this sense the experience was rewarding.

I learned to use some new pedagogical tools, such as Miro and Canva.

I also learned a great deal about fast-paced group work: self-organization, spontaneous leadership and getting work started, done and presented in a very short time frame. This will be helpful both in my career in education as well as in my private architecture practice.

I enjoyed the politeness and empathy of my peers in my group. People were ready to take responsibility and help each other.

It was challenging to orient throughout the course due to the lack of clear introduction to bi-weekly topics and intended learning outcomes for each. As a group we had to at least in part define the scope ourselves. There was no check in the end if the learning outcomes had been achieved, probably partly because they were not clearly specified in the beginning.

I would like to keep exploring the possibilities of online teaching and learning in the courses I’m responsible for organizing at Aalto University. The different perspectives of my peers in the ONL211 course help reflecting on my own teaching practice.

Miro is an online visual collaboration platform for teamwork.

Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content.