Time flies… I have enjoyed this ONL-journey. Summing up the course, I realize how much I have learned, even things that I did not anticipate. I learned about the importance of an open mind, that being open to new ideas and methods may take you further than you expected. This course has increased my ability and willingness to “think outside the box” in terms of pedagogical methods.

The most important things that I have learned through the ONL course – and why

• Digital literacies. I found it useful to view the two axes of the digital world as being continuous and not binary, i.e. being a visitor vs. a resident in the digital world and being in the personal vs. the institutional (e.g. work-related) sphere. In fact, these two continuum together shape a two-dimensional diagram, and a person may be at different places in this diagram in different the contexts (1, 2). I found this knowledge important since it will help me to classify my students in this diagram, and thus guide me on suitable levels of technical demands for the learning activities. Especially, I think that before knowing the students, we should not assume that they are familiar with e-learning even if they belong to the “online-generation”.

• Openness and sharing. A very useful knowledge was the openly available sources where I can post my own teaching material or look for learning material. These sources include, but are not limited to Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/), OER Commons (https://www.oercommons.org/), Open textbook Library (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/) and Open learning Initiative (https://oli.cmu.edu/). We discussed the challenges and possible solutions concerning openness, including copyright issues and judging to what extent the source is trustworthy. Working at a university, I found it interesting to reflect on my institution’s ability to adapt new technologies (3).

• Networked collaborative learning. There are two things that I found especially useful in this topic. The first thing was really understanding the meaning of collaboration and not simply cooperation (4). To facilitate good collaboration, it is important to have a clear organization of the work, to have a common goal and to clarify everyone’s contribution to the work, to be able to adapt to change, and to be able to deal with emotions. Understanding how to successfully collaborate, will be useful for me both when collaborating with colleagues and when facilitating students’ collaborations. Secondly, I found all the technical collaborative tools we found and tried very useful, such as Padlet (https://sv.padlet.com/dashboard) and MindMeister (https://www.mindmeister.com).

• Design for online and blended learning. It was useful to learn about the theory of Community of Inquiry (COI), suggesting that there are four prerequisites for successful learning to occur (5). These are social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence. The most useful insight concerning the COI was the importance of emotion. I will bring this in mind for my teaching and pay more attention to emotional expressions. Furthermore, I found it very interesting to read about blended learning. In my last blog post, I cited a meta-analysis suggesting that flipped-classroom design yielded better student outcomes than traditional classroom teaching in medical settings (6). However, in a scoping review the author concluded that it is the combination of learning elements, not the online teaching, that enables good learning by deepening student engagement (7).  Thus, in my opinion one of the most important “take-home-messages” from this course is that the best learning is created by optimizing the balance between online and in-class teaching.

How I think my ONL learning will influence my practice

I learned that collaborating online is not as complicated or difficult as one may think. The ONL has given me several tools, both in terms of technical solutions and in terms of pedagogical knowledge. By using these tools, I think I will be able to move my teaching forward for example, by better mixing learning styles and modalities (e.g. online and in-class teaching), allow the students to be more creative, and consider emotions to make students feel more comfortable.

My thoughts about using technology to enhance learning/teaching in my own context

By using different technical tools, I hope I can make student collaboration and online learning more efficient, varied and fun. Furthermore, I think that technical tools may enhance in-class teaching. For instance, I learned about the tool Mentimeter (https://www.mentimeter.com/). In a recent lecture, I used the Mentimeter to let the students rate their level of physical activity and their sitting time, according to the Swedish public health survey. I wanted to emphasize the difficulties in rating sitting time, and thus make the students think about the validity of such measures. By experiencing the difficulties, I think it may be easier for the students to remember my point about validity than if I would have just talked about.

What I will do as a result of my involvement in ONL – and why

I think taking the ONL course is just the beginning of my journey to digital literacy. As I mentioned in the introduction of this blog post, I have learned things that I did not anticipate. I feel more open to new learning experiences, and I hope to be able to continue the learning process. Besides continuing my own journey to digital literacy, I will do my best to implement the knowledge from the course in my teaching. Perhaps I will be able to inspire some colleagues to use a better mixture of methods for their teaching?

Why I will do it? To make learning more engaging and fun for my students and thus to make them even better prepared for a lifelong learning when they leave university.  

My suggestions for development of eLearning in my own teaching

Overall, I am more positive to online teaching after taking this course than I was before. I have several thoughts on how to implement eLearning in my teaching. I mentioned one idea in my previous blog post.

A problem in many university programs and courses is that only a certain proportion of the students show up in class for in-class sessions. Mixing in-class teaching with more online activities may be one way of increasing student engagement.

I want to conclude this blog post by saying THANK YOU to the ONL PBL group 1 (Pinar, Peter, Yadhna, Diego and Lorraine), our facilitators Alastair and Mboni, and the ONL192 team!    

References

1. White D. & Le Cornu A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049
2. White D. Online lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be
3. Weller M & Anderson T (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 16(1), 53. https://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2013&halfyear=1&article=559
4. Brindley J, Blaschke LM & Walti C (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271
5. Garrison D.R, Anderson T, Archer W (1999). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education. Volume 2, Pages 87-105.  doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6.
6. Khe Foon HEW & Chung Kwan LO (2018). Flipped classroom improves student learning in health professions education: a meta-analysis. BMC Med Educ 18, 38 doi:10.1186/s12909-018-1144-z
7. Daniel J.O.C (2016). Making Sense of Blended Learning: Treasuring an older tradition or finding a better future? Contact North.