Closure

As I come to the close of my time in PBL 4 and my time in ONL, I want to in this final blog reflect on my experience in ONL and how it has impacted me.

Relationships

One of the strengths of ONL is the bringing together of people from diverse backgrounds for the purpose of learning and co-constructing knowledge together. It forges relationships which would not have otherwise have been possible. Such bringing together of diversity forces us to become aware of how people differ, what pedagogical values shape them and how they interact from the place of their culture, personalities and educational backgrounds. I became more aware of myself as the group provided such a mirror for me to gain this awareness. I realized that I had rich educational, teaching and research experience which I needed to share because there are many who have yet to acquire these experiences.

One of the ways I did this was to apply my experience of group moderation when it came to my turn. I had a co-moderator who wanted to learn from me and I had a group who was very motivated to engage in the questions I was asking and to participate in the padlet by contributing to it. This experience gave me a sense of satisfaction and I felt I got to know everyone better. It was also amazing to be able to tap on Filip’s rich knowledge as he generously shared his views and tools.

Pedagogical Shift

At the start of ONL, I had very little knowledge on the concepts of networked learning and open learning OR the difference between a learning community and a learning network. These concepts add value to me as we are operating in an educational landscape that is rapidly changing with technology. I am now able to streamline how I operate in different contexts. For example. I’ll continue to grow my learning networks for topics that I’m interested in and build communities that are more collaborative in nature – how true it is that we individually cannot possibly keep up with the speed at which knowledge is being created and generated and therefore need new ways of learning!

I maintain that I’m definitely not an individual hierarchical leader and that I display the other three styles of collaborative hierarchical, individual distributed and collaborative distributed depending on the goals of learning I want my learners to achieve. I personally think that while collaboration and knowledge building are important that we need to find the balance between freedom and direction depending on the group of learners we work with. Too much freedom with out direction can lead to learners “going astray” while too much “control” can stifle learners creativity and agency.

Tools

I’ve definitely been exposed to many more tools than I’ve used before but because my focus is on pedagogical effectiveness, it takes a bit of time for me to familiarize myself with them and to workout which tool would be most effective for the learning outcomes I desire for my students. I definitely feel more equipped with this knowledge of tools and their potential for engagement. It would be great if the training videos for the tools could be provided in a repository so we can always go to it as a “one stop” place to pick what we want.

Time Constraint

When doing ONL, I was not the typical student who was stationed in one place. I had to move 3-4 times and across countries and time zones. This made it difficult for me to spend more time on ONL. So I wish I did have the time I spent on moving to have spent it on ONL :). I would have gone deeper in my learning and connected even more with the wider ONL community.

Further Learning

As I move forward from ONL, I take with me some of the tensions in my understanding of my approaches to learning and pedagogy, to delve deeper into how I can design for greater effectiveness. Eg. one of the tensions I carry with me is trying to work out what the best balance is between a more directed versus a more distributed style of moderating a pbl group, among other musings I have.

Finally ….

I want to thank Filip and Ann for facilitating the group and my PBL 4 group for being so open to learn and grow together over the duration of our course. Thank you, all.

Blessed Christmas and a fruitful 2022 to you !