In this closing post I’d like to share some of my final comments on my amazing and unbelievable journey as a participant of ONL211.

The past 2 weeks of our activities had been very important for me as the part of ONL211 journey, as we’ve focused on rethinking how to design online, traditional and blended learning. In fact, due to COVID19 pandemic, it is not always possible to organize normal classes, with all the people in the same room, where they can meet and traditionally participate in the learning activities. As we have been lately been forced to stay home and avoid contacts with other persons, at many locations only the pure online teaching has been possible, without even a chance of doing it in a blended way (mixing digital and in-person). Thus, in such circumstances, it is very important to ensure the best possible combination between synchronous and asynchronous activities that can facilitate and help students to engage and develop.  An interesting approach for designing and scaffolding such environment is the 5-step approach by prof. Gilly Salmon. It starts from ensuring the proper accesses and our motivation to learn, then taking us through socialization, understood as a sense of belonging, with good relations between participants. Then, exchanging information aimed at realizing the pedagogical targets and planned contributions. In the end, we are supposed to review and develop our achievements in the mutual feeling of realizing joint goal and stepping onto ‘meta-cognition’ (learning about how we are learning). It was particularly inspiring to learn about it in connection to prof. Cleveland-Innes theory of ‘Community of Inquiry‘ that offers us the insight of educational experience that is at the centre of 3 types of presences at the learning process: social presence (identifying us as a part of community), teaching presence (designing and directing the learning process) and cognitive presence (creating and challenging meanings and developments).

All these notions, together with the 3 topics we earlier discussed at ONL211 helped me to realize and understand much more about the learning processes that I’ve ever expected. First of all, I am very grateful and honoured that I was lucky to get assigned to Group no. 10, full of diverse and very inspiring persons. Every single meeting with them was a fascinating moment for me that made me discover how different we are, how differently we understand concepts, how diverse are our ways and modes of working, communicating and perceiving the world. We all have different perspectives and approach each topic and assignment in a unique way. It is all about the trust, openness and good energy between people that can exchange so much between each other that allows them to learn. All the rest, the place, tools and subjects are in my opinion less critical. I think that my key learning outcome of this course is this sense of diversity, multiperspectivism and the importance of understanding more than we have ever expected. It will have certainly important impact on my work as an academic teacher, as I will focus less on the technical tools and ways of engaging students, but more on their journey and their experience from the learning process. I will listen more actively to their stories and encourage them to stay bold and flexible to diversity around. I have no doubt that technology can help us to make our classes more interesting and since most of the students are already ‘digital natives’ (according to prof. Prensky’s theory), so using technology will always be so natural part of their lives, as well as irreplaceable part of their learning experiences. I will also try to give students more space for their own experimenting, creativity and proposing their own initiatives and actions they’d like to do. I think that it will help them, and particularly myself to learn more from each class. And all in all, I hope that I will become at least a bit better learner and teacher, certainly keeping this precious experience in my heart!