What an amazing journey! I must admit that I was a bit reluctant to register for the course after knowing about the workload and efforts that are needed. Actually, it was a bit hard in the beginning since I felt insecure. It was my first experience being in an online learning community. However, after a while, it became very natural and even more interesting. Our fantastic facilitator arranged an introductory meeting that we were asked to show one personal item and to talk about that. This technique helped us to know each other and to build a safe and trust zone in the group. We further developed a great sense of community of learning and working towards the common goal sets for the topic every two weeks. It became a routine for us to meet, discuss, look for solutions, and brainstorm ideas for more discussions.
We learned together that the individual success is on the hand of the group success. That helped us establish a common ground rule for the members and know that, for example, if you cannot participate in the synchronous discussion sessions, you still can bring in your idea in an asynchronous mode. With collaborative learning and discussion, I realized that how efficient and constructive is the learning process.
Openness and sharing was another important aspect that we have learned during the course. Alongside the benefits that can be achieved through openness and the new opportunity that it brings for collaborative learning and better learning development, we discussed the limitations and fears, including the copyright, laws, and rules; data ownership, and at what level we want to share. Finally, we learned a new concept of open licensing of content (Creative Commons) to help the copyright issue.
Different tools and platforms were used during the course. I was surprised by seeing many available tools that can be used for online education. In one of the topics, where we had to discuss the design for online and blended learning, we realized that one of the key elements is to increase the level of interaction and engagement in students. That is not an easy task, and in order to satisfy this metric, you should know a pedagogical framework and the concept of community of inquiry (CoI).
In the end, I would like to say that although I learned a lot in this course, I am still at the beginning of the road, and I need to learn more and put my knowledge in practice. ONL was an eye-opener and indeed a rewarding course, and now I find myself more confident that I would be able to develop an online course in the future and practice my new skill.
