For my final blog post for ONL211, I have chosen the title of the last episode of my favourite Sherlock Holmes’ tv series. Therefore, no problem does exist in this blog post, but a few appreciative words.

The most important thing that I have learned is how to collaborate in an online environment. We, the members of each PBL group, also individual strangers worked and built a small community together. Thanks to synchronous meetings, I have improved my social presence as a person and moreover, I have learned how I can develop it in my students as well. I have tried, signed up, failed, regretted using new tools during the journey. I took the initiative and volunteered to be topic leader for topics that I had slight idea. I also learned how to FISh and in turn it also improved my note-taking skills. I did not let my comfort zone avoid me from investing effort even if I did not have to! I realised that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation accompany each other as I held onto to one of them during this journey. I have set a nice PLN for future and I do hope to be helpful anytime it is needed. Finally, I filled my pockets with useful theoretical information about online teaching.

By using what I have learned, I am thinking of redesigning my teaching. If the pandemic continues, and it seems to stay for a while, it is likely that we have to continue teaching online. By adopting the theories that I have learned such as CoI, I will give more importance to social presence of my learners so that they can collaborate, engage more in my classes. Even if we start teaching face-to-face, blending my classes especially lecture type ones is one thing I aim to do because I can allocate more time to discussions during class times.

I work at English Language Teaching Department. I train prospective English Language teachers. By implementing new tools into my teaching, I think I can be a role model to my students. They can later use these tools in their teaching practices as well. I will also implement some tools to use for asynchronous learning opportunities to increase the engagement between myself and students and among themselves as well.

A friend, who participated as an open learner to the previous ONL course, recommended me to participate in ONL211. I will also recommend my colleagues from my department to consider participating in future ONLs as it will definitely change their perspective about online teaching and provide new insights about teaching. I am thinking of keeping writing my blog on academic stuff. For example, I have been in Spain for 7 months now and I am trying to learn Spanish as an adult learner. I want to write on my journey of learning Spanish because I am thinking of referring to my experiences while and if I teach a course called ‘Language Acquisition’. Bringing real examples to the classrooms ease learning process when the course especially consists of too many theoretical knowledge. In order not to forget my experiences and collect them as well-structured pieces, blogging seems a nice option.

Lastly, students need to be given responsibility for their eLearning journey. Instead of being sole consumers, they also need to create something. The best way of learning something is to teach it. They can start designing basic open educational resources for their own good and also for other people.

As final words, I would like to thank everyone whom I got the chance to meet during this journey. The chapter of learning in ONL now seems to come to an end. But it will lead to new directions. I hope that our roads will cross in the future and we will learn together.

Very best wishes,

Kadriye P.