Learning experience in this course has been kind of an interesting lesson in itself. Looking at the four modes of learning as expressed by Professor Richard Elmore, I think I expected the course to be like so many others, on an hierarchical individual level. But to my surprise, looking back, I think I have mentally conceptualized and journeyed thought all four levels (roughly speaking) in this course.

For example, when the very first meeting came and we did some video presentations about ourselves, submitted and that was it, next task. But then when we got into the work a bit more, and the FISh document took its place, I thought, “well, this is a typical hierarchical collective learning experience” (without actually thinking in those terms, since I had not heard about these four modes of learning beforehand, but the idea was the same, i.e., similar to the individual hierarchical but focused on group activities). And I think this was the case for the first topic, we collaborate, discussed and took some time to find common values and together find a solution to the task at hand.

I would say it wasn’t until perhaps topic 3 that we really started to get the hang of the asynchronous work a bit more, and it, in a way, turned more into a distributed individual learning. We do this since we are interested about new ways of education and teaching. There were not given approach or correct answer, but we (individually in our group) sat out to study whats been done, read up on new ideas, insights, and basically come back with “building blocks” to our meetings and used to compile our final contribution of that topic.

The last two topics became more about not just reading up and learning by ourselves, but also to share what we learned. That is to say, not just in the submissions, but also between ourselves and in the final Miro-board.

So, one of the biggest takeaway from this course would be the mix between the synchronous and asynchronous learning we have been through, and how this hybrid mode (synchronous and asynchronous) have affected the continuous learning. This is something I wish to better incorporate in my own learning which has been focused, perhaps a bit too much, on the hierarchical collective side of things. If I can motivate and “provoke” (in lack of a better word) the idea of self-benefited knowledge, not necessarily within the scope of a course and its grade, but for the sake of learning, expanding the students own skills, and perhaps even share their experience and learning with others, not necessarily within the limited class, but different networks and/or communities. Then I think I as a teacher has managed to open up the full potential of that course or topic. Learning is not limited to a course, but an ongoing social activity.

In this sense, I think the ONL course has made me reflect more on the way we can learn, collaborate, share, problematize in our ways of teaching and learning.