I have recently begun a pedagogical course in open networked learning. The aim (I believe) is to equip teachers with tools to conduct open networked learning courses in the future and to give us the chance to experience some open networked learning of our own. You see, it’s very meta! The course is conducted online and so we get to learn about open networked learning in an open networked learning setting!

So far, so good, right? Well, I’m not sure. To be honest, my experience so far is that the course is not very open nor very networked! The organisers and facilitators have been great. Very helpful. And my first experiences of using zoom as an online meeting tool have been good. (I will definitely use it again.) However, I haven’t yet “met” any of the other participants in the course or in my study group (aside from a perfunctory “hello, I am…” message in a google chat) and I haven’t been able to join any of the meetings with the other participants. Mind you, judging from the google chats, it seems like my teammates have managed to arrange meetings, take a group photo and even come up with some work plans. So, perhaps it’s not the course that is lacking. Perhaps it is me that is not very open or networked!

To try to make myself more open and networked, I am focusing on making sure I have ticked all the right boxes in all the right places to receive all the right email updates. Apart from that, I will spend some time and energy this week on reading some of the course literature. In the meantime, I guess this is a great way to put myself in the place of my future students and build some empathy