This final blog post on the ONL course is all about the things I will take with me into my teaching. It is about digital tools, culture and new perspectives for me in my professional and private life.

Digital tools

I have seen myself as relatively creative with the use of digital tools, but also quite conservative in which tools I use. Having a limited amount of time to try out new tools, makes it hard to renew oneself and to think outside of the box. The ONL course has provided a community, where I have had the privilege of meeting teachers around the world and it has been such a great way of testing out new tools and sharing thoughts on what has worked and what has not. Some of the tools that I will absolutely take with me for my classes are:

Bookcreator

Miro

ABC workshop

Genially

MOOCs are also something that I will use to widen my knowledge within the fields I teach in. I find it strange that I have missed out on the numerous possibilities to take free courses online and to get an insight on how other universities take on different subjects!

Culture

This reflection is short! I will not discuss learning strategies from different cultures or anything advanced. What I would like to bring up is, that my experience in the ONL course was that we had far more similarities when it comes to challenges and perspectives on teaching than what I would have expected. Getting together a group of teachers from all corners of the world, one might think that it can be hard to have a common view on our roles or on teaching. This was not the case in our PBL group. Even though we discussed matters of hierarchy as differences, we found common ground in how change-driven we are. We all wanted the students to thrive in their studies and we all wanted to find creative solutions to help them succeed. This was a solid foundation to build upon! Looking back at Curtis & Lawsons (2001) article, stating that students need both structural and social skills to help them succeed in a collaborative environment and by that building confidence for future group work, I feel we as teachers need that too. A community like this, can provide some of that support.

New perspectives

To be honest; the two first topics in this course went by in a haze and I did not take the time needed for reflection. During topic 3 it was my time to be moderator, which also led to a lot more reflection and learning from my part. This was an eye-opener for me, because I realized the worth of having an active role in a course, taking responsibility of my own learning. This is something that we as teachers often point out as important, but if we don’t facilitate this in a course design, it can be hard for students to prioritize. In my teaching I often point out how important it is to see problems, ideas, organizations and even people from different perspectives. Therefore, I take this student-perspective with me and try to take a moment between classes to reflect upon what amount of time my students get to be active and alert in class – or is it just a one-(wo)man-show.

Thank you ONL and ONLers!

References:

ABC Learning Design – Sprint design your courses and programs in just 90 minutes (abc-ld.org)

Curtis, D. D., & Lawson, M. J. (2001). Exploring collaborative online learning. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(1), 21-34.