After a week of reflections and discussions with myself and others it is time to make the final blog post about ONL192. The suggestions for the blog post is questions like; What effect has the learning experience from this course had on your development of personal learning networks and your own professional practice? What were the benefits and what were the challenges? What are the next steps?
At the moment it is hard to say what effects the learning experience from this course have had on my professional practice. I think time will show that. Also it is at the moment hard to differ what this course have given in relation to other parts of my professional practice since I have online and blended learning as my daily practice and have had so for years.
Also the collaborative work reminded me about the importance of structure balanced to freedom/openess. We spent – or at least I did- several hours durin the first topics to scroll thorugh the Fish- document being uncertain about in what part of the process people had been adding material and texts. It took time that gace more frustration than learning. I have heard student groups complain about similar experiences in groups and I thing now I can understand the problem. Also there I now know I may be able to ease some frutration by discuss the possibility to decide about structuring written material.
One of the eye openers (among others) in this course, that I focused on in an earlier blog post was Odones (2019) way of clarify the relations and differencies between online learning community and online learning network.
Back then I reflected on how we could shape learning situations where we support students work within their online community aswell as open up for online learning networks. While thinking more about it the plan to give a work shop where student groups could illustrate and map their own group sources but also include different ways each one can see that they can generate knowledge from sources outside their community for the gain of both community and network. During spring I will have some learning situations with groups about leadership and learning and my plans have started to grow. Since the nursing organisation also highlights in different texts that it will be vital for nurses in the future to form networks for learning and quality improvement it also is right in time.
Earlier, already before attending this course, I also have tried to highlight the need to include learning theories focusing on the need of new literacies and demands on inidivduals in the digital era. Since decision-making and abilities to value and choose information and knowledge valid for the area working within is a necessity for evidens based care nurses of today, and even more tomorrow , we really need to help students find alternative learning theories besides the traditional ones. Something tells me that will cause some struggle since leaving safe lectures are seldom easy.
One result this course have had on my, and some collegues , practice just now is that I managed to talk our group into using some open educational resources instead of making our own lectures and videos. This is not something I have started to use now, we have used lot of materials from Youtube, Google Scholar eg in the distance program earlier. But now I managed to argue for using open webbased material and a web course in a study block in the more traditional program. It will be interesting to evaluate opinions after this semester.
And for me, the ONL 192 web site will be a source for more investigation, more reading and maybe more blogs/discussion online.
Thank you to PBL group 2, our fascilitator and co-fascilitator and all other participants in ONL192 for being a part of the journey!
Have a really marvellous Christmas and a happy Online 2020.
References:
Odone, K (2019) Personal Learning Networks, Theory and Practice. PART 1
Odone, K. ?) Personal Learning Networks. Theory and Practive, part two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqSBTr9DPH8
Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. [Homepage] http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.).
