Hello everyone,

I have started writing this blog as part of the ONL (Open Networked Learning) course after much anticipation and excitement about learning something new and meeting new people from other parts of the world. The course design is based on an open, collaborative and networked learning practices and our group, as problem based learners (PBL) explore different scenarios and topics each week. We also make use of the FISh model to analyse and identify some of the related scenarios and present this to the larger ONL community. This is an interesting tool which I have definitely added to my toolkit!

As an institutional learner, it has been a successful two weeks in the course so far after getting to know the other members in my group and engaging with our first topic on digital literacies.

Our very first task was for our group to find a creative way to represent ourselves to the rest of the ONL community and I had suggested we use a tree as symbol of growth and development, branching out all our ideas and thoughts about the course since our group is quite diverse. With much readiness and enthusiasm, we have called our PBL group a unique name – ‘DiversiTree’.

I also had the opportunity to attend a webinar which was quite interesting relating to our digital consumption and our experience as learners and educators. I reside in South Africa and with our current demands of higher education, online learning provides a reliable source for accessing course materials and the opportunity for institutions to use a variety of pedological and collaborative tools to engage learners in critical and reflective thinking.

Looking forward to how the course unfolds over the next 12 weeks!