All good things must come to an end, even ONL. So, it’s time to sum things up and reflect about the entire course. What have I learned, and how will it affect my teaching in the future?
First, I would like to applaud the meta organisation of the course; we have learned about online learning by doing it ourselves. This has been very handy for me, giving me some hands-on experience with online group work and a variety of digital tools. It seems like a sound principle that whatever you require your students to do, you should have tried yourself. If nothing else, this might make you avoid some pitfalls. For example, I have realised that it is a good idea that the teacher attends a few group meetings, occasionally giving the students a gentle push in the right direction.
Otherwise, the course has consisted of four main topics, all of which have been rewarding in various ways. I would like to summarise these by listing a few take-home messages (to myself) for each topic:
Topic 1: I am almost exclusively a visitor online. There is nothing wrong with this, but again, I can’t expect my students to do things that I don’t do myself. So if I would like my students to, say, twitter about their work, I have to take pains to do some twittering myself. I don’t know if this is ever going to happen, but it is good to be aware of the issue.
Topic 2: There are lots of good stuff in the internet, and it might be worth the effort to take some time and look around. (For example, Carys made me aware of the Khan Academy, which almost blew me away with their high-quality statistics videos – thanks Carys!) Creative Commons makes me feel safe that (and how) things can be used. I have nothing against sharing e.g. lecture slides myself, but I am still uncertain about where and how to do that. So for the time being, the material will have to reside in our somewhat obscure course homepage. However, thanks to Google such things can be found, and I know that it has happened at least once.
Topic 3: Creative and dynamic collaboration between students is (or should be) the dream of any teacher, but can be very hard to achieve in practice. Of course, this depends heavily on the students, it is definitively easier for motivated PhD students than for bored teenager pupils. The likelihood of success increases with good planning, where a substantial amount of time is spent preparing the ground early in the course, cf. Topic 4.
Topic 4: Emotions are a fundamental part of being a human, and it affects everything we do, including learning. This must be acknowledged. As a teacher, you should set an example and facilitate a good atmosphere. Suitable actions include: Giving a warm welcome, eliminating technological stress by good tech support, showing a good mood generally, positive and encouraging reception of questions, and a sense of humor. The early phase of a course can be largely devoted to this, combined with basic learning. More advanced learning, including collaborative group works, should come later. All this is valid for any kind of course, but it is critical online, since you lose so much when body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions disappear. Video meetings can mitigate these problems, but they cannot fully replace physical meetings.
So, will I be a better teacher armed with all this? I hope so. I probably won’t make any direct radical changes (although I plan to implement some tips, e.g. monitoring of group works). But I do feel like a richer person from having reflected on this. And a little less scared of online technologies after trying some things out.
As a final side remark, I am currently admitting students to our next statistics course in September. I then got a question from a student living in a near-by city, who told me that he is currently not allowed to travel, and so he wondered how the course will be run if this situation continues. The question made me a little scared. I have simply assumed that the corona situation will have normalised by then, but obviously, this is not so certain. So it may be that we will suddenly have to run a 100% online course already this year. And if this happens, I am extra glad at having got some experience and good advice.
So, thanks ONL for a nice spring!