Taking ONL201 in spring 2020 turned out to be timely. The sudden transition to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic provided plenty of examples to illustrate the theory we discussed during the course. 

For me, the transition to online teaching was smooth, as I had already blended the course I was teaching at the time my university closed down. I had the video lectures recorded, and all I had to do was to shift the remaining discussion sessions, and student presentations of project work, to zoom, and design an appropriate take-home exam. I had already had a chance to establish a personal contact with my students with face-to-face meetings earlier on in the course, which helped. But it feels reassuring that next time around for that course, or the other blended courses I teach, or will design and teach in the future, the ONL course has provided me with a solid framework, based in educational research, to go back to.

I liked how the ONL course was designed, as it really illustrated good course structure. One of the main lessons learned was actually practicing online learning, as a participant in the course. This made me perceptive to what it is like being an online student, including challenges posed by collaborative group work, and difficulties of communication and sustained motivation in a remote setting. Division of course material into blocks, with continuous check-points (in this case blog posts), clear reading instructions mixed with recorded and live webinars, and not least PBL group meetings with facilitators that helped direct the discussions, are really useful elements, and this is best learned by doing, I think. As ONL participants, we are the experiment, or the lab rats, as one of my PBL group peers expressed it.

The PBL group was also really good for sharing some of the frustrations that we all experienced in our online teaching. Although we are engaged in ONL and see many benefits of going online, and/or blending our teaching, I think we all in the end agreed that we miss the classroom, and that a pure online environment can’t completely replace a physical teaching and learning context.

Starting the ONL I had expected to learn more about practical and technical solutions. I think I was hoping for some miracle tools that would be better than those I have already used for my online and blended teaching. But although throughout the course we have used a variety of tools and platforms, some new to me and some familiar, I think the take-home message is that a blend is good here too. To summarize, the online learning experience with ONL has definitely contributed to my confidence in my own online teaching.