I started the ONL231 not quite knowing what I had gotten myself into. I signed up for the course in September last year after checking out the list of higher education courses offered to faculty at Lund University. It was the introductory question “Do you want to learn (more) about ways to use digital tools for teaching and learning?” that had caught my attention.

Little did I know what I had gotten myself into, and was up for a pleasant surprise. During the first few weeks of this course I have learnt a lot of new things. Both in terms of reading and discussing topics I normally do not work with, but also by being introduced to new ways of working together in an online forum.

The first topic for the course has been “Digital literacy”. The topic was introduced to us in a webinar hosted by David White. It was an interactive session, where we were encouraged to start reflecting on our own digital literacy. Our digital engagement can be mapped using the V&R mapping process, where our various web activities are divide into different levels of visitor and resident mode, as well as in personal and institutional usage. The level differs depending on what type of online activity you are engaged in and for what purpose, and most people place themselves along both ends on the scale, all depending on the type of activity.

Even so, the most fun and interesting thing of the course has been the PBL group work. It started out in a, at least for me, very confused modus, where I had little understanding of what our assignment was, and how this should work out. But after a while it all started to make sense. By discussions on the topic Digital literacy, explaining to the group what we had read and found interesting, and then agreeing on a way to present what we had learned, we managed to have both fun and learn new things. In this process, using the FiSH model  (Focus, Investigate, Share) to guide our collaborative work was very helpful.  A good start on a new educational journey!