Thoughts on ONL

In doing this reflection, I started thinking about what motivated me to sign up for this course and how glad I am to be able to attend this. Now that the course is completed, I am truly glad that I have this opportunity to learn. Like what the image on top says, education is indeed a journey and there is still so many destinations to visit.

Prior to ONL, online learning has already been implemented (albeit hastily) by us due to the covid-19 pandemic. Most teachers or educators have to jump gear and quickly transformed their physical lessons to online/virtual platforms. It is a simple move from physical to virtual platforms (or at least that what I thought). There was little thoughts on how the different format have affected the effectiveness of the lessons conducted. I have continued to conduct my lectures using Zoom as if I am at the lecture halls. Lecture recordings continued to be uploaded like before. Nothing much have changed, or prompted me to change the design of the courses or delivery style.

Now that I have completed ONL, it has opened my horizon on the ways to conduct online lessons and how to make them engaging and effective. Now I have an wide variety of online platforms and digital tools to employ in my lessons. It would also reshape the design of my courses definitely.

Moving forward – Next steps beyond ONL

I had such a good time with my PBL team mates and the synergy is there, so we would certainly keep in touch and share interesting practices and new information with one another. This network would certainly help to enrich and enhance my teaching.

Individually, I have so much inspirations from ONL and from my peers that I am motivated to rethink my course designs and how to reshape them to suit the new format of education – hybrid education. I truly believe that hybrid style, a mixture of physical and virtual lessons, would be here to stay even after the pandemic. I would also look into different pedagogy to improve the students’ experience and help them to adjust and adapt quickly to this new format. Students will always remain the central/heart of what we do.

One style that really intrigued me is the “flipped classroom” method. Can it really work? Can it effectively replace the traditional classroom setting? What is the most effective way to conduct lessons? I guess the education indeed continue for me as I continue on this journey to be a better teacher/educator :).