I’m finally done with the ONL course! It was surely a rewarding and learning experience, though interestingly, all of us participants in my PBL group reported that the main challenge with the course was lack of time. This is why I write ”finally”, though I did enjoy the course – it did take time that I didn’t really have, which contributed to stress on my behalf. This really made me think – more in general – about the fact that whatever I do, or wherever I go, I hear myself and others complaining about lack of time. Is this endemic to our society in some way? That we always want to accomplish more than what we have time for? Indeed, Anglo-Saxon societies have been desribed in particular to be characterised by time efficiency, where time is exprienced as being ”wasted” if actions are mot being performed efficiently.

As I see it, this perhaps endemic sense of lack of time is one of the main challenges that we have as teachers. While it is oftentimes recommended that students be given time to reflect more deeply, rather than packing courses too tight with content, I am wondering if that is possible? Sometimes it feels to me as though the habit of doing things time-efficiently is so deeply ingrained in us, that we often just use the minimum amount of time required for a task, and that ”time for reflection” that we perhaps design into courses will simply be used for something else instead.

One aspect, though, that did allow me to reflect more deeply on the ONL course was the use of blogs. As the guidelines for these were pretty open, and we were explicitly instructed not to take the blogging so seriously and academically, it perhaps enabled more deep reflection. The more strict the guidelines, the more prone we become, perhaps, to just ”tick boxes” and follow the guidelines without further reflection. This playful aspect of the blogs was – at least for me – a very pleasant feature of the course. Thus, I will probably be trying to use more playful aspects in learning in the future, and to focus more on process rather than content, as I found this rewarding and a new expereinece during my engagement in ONL.

Another important theme of the course for me was that of digital residents vs. natives. I really don’t see myself as a native, though I constantly use digital media. I still get very easily frustrated when I can’t work out how various tools function, and when for example my internet connection or microphone is not working at a Zoom meeting. It seems that I, at some very fundamental level, have not completely embraced the digital world, and am constantly slightly fighting against digitalisation. The ONL course has helped me notice that I am engaged in this kind of an internal ”battle”, and perhaps also helped me move sightly away from it. But I think the theme of finding a balance between the use of digital media and ”real-life” activities (for myself as well as for my children), will be something I will always tackle with.

All in all, I would greatly like to thank my lovely PBL group 4 members and my facilitators Francisca and Danielle for their friendliness, caring and support! After all, digital or IRL, people are what makes me tick