A long break, the dark winter, Christmas with only half my family, a New Year opening dismally with increased contagion and more restrictions than before. A demagogue, and angry mob – and yet I have a primula blooming on my windowsill. And I have two projects going at work – nothing makes «going to work»Les meir "Evolve"

The next iteration of Open Networked Learning, ONL211, starts on 22 February 2021. We will soon be publishing the course overview and will be updating the web site during January. Participants from the following partner institutions for ONL211 can register for the course via their internal registration channels: Karlstad University, Lund University, Linnaeus University, Linköping […]

All too soon, we arrived to the final week of the course! It felt like it was only yesterday when I signed up for the course. The ONL course has certainly shifted my ideas surrounding online learning, and consequently, how to teach effectively over the online platform. At the start of the ONL journey, IContinue reading "Topic 5: Lessons Learnt – Future Practices"

The fourth and final topic for the ONL course was on online and blended learning. The PBL group read and discussed papers on the Community of Inquiry by Mart Cleveland-Innes, as well as the Five Stage Model by Gilly Salmon. The latter model provides a framework for online learning. We collectively agreed that the FiveContinue reading "Topic 4: Design for Online and Blended Learning"

After a one week break to reflect on our progress thus far, we were introduced to the third ONL course topic on learning in communities. In particular, we focused on collaborative learning within networks. As a group, we discussed the differences between cooperative and collaborative learning, and the difference between PLCs and PLNs. Our groupContinue reading "Topic 3: Learning in Communities– Networked Collaborative Learning"

Open learning, and their challenges and successes, was the focus of the second ONL course topic. PBL group discussions for topic 2 were spirited, especially because each member interpreted ‘openness’ differently, and had different thresholds of comfort for material they share or make public. From the topic lectures, we were introduced to the 4Rs in sharingContinue reading "Topic 2: Open Learning – Sharing and Openness"

There are many layers of differences between humans. On a personal level, I prefer to socialise with people who share the same values, and who perceive the world in a similar way. Professionally, too many similarities may lead to stagnation rather than development. With only visionaries in a team, there is an obvious risk thatContinue reading "The dilemma of finding an adequate level of differences"

The focus for the first two weeks of the ONL course was to explore how people use digital spaces. The terms ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘Digital Immigrants’ were popularised by Marc Prensky in an article published in 2001. The former describes people born after, or grew up in, the digital age and who are ‘plugged in’Continue reading "Topic 1: Online Participation & Digital Literacy"

Why is it so important to plan and arrange for a good start? There are many good reasons, and one of them is that a successful university education is very much about relations. To build sustainable relations and a sense of belonging you may also need support and a context. A sense of security willContinue reading "Scaffolding for a solid start"

With one day left of 2020 and the ONL202 course completed, in this post I look back to summarize and critically reflect on my learning and development thanks to the course. In a nutshell, it could be described in a few words – modelling practice, nudging, rewarding, fun, confidence, reflection. The most important experience fromContinue reading "Sparking an exciting and full of opportunities learning journey …"

The key question that we faced during this topic in the course is how to organize and nurture a process to creating a meaningful learning experience. The answer was through community of inquiry (CoI) and its three interdependent presences – social, cognitive and teaching. Figure 1 visualizes the basic idea of this concept. Fiock (2020)Continue reading "Challenges when designing for online and blended learning"

The last topic in the ONL202 course was focussed on reflecting on the journey in the course. The course provided an enriching experience of various aspects of online teaching as well as learning. As it was highlighted several times that ‘the course is the course’, the activities were highly student oriented with few lectures (moreContinue reading "Looking ahead (ONL202 Topic 5)"