Digital Renaissance: From Anxiety to Adventure in Education’s New Frontier

Even though I may be the most experienced at my workplace when it comes to working with online courses and digital tools, I have still embarked on ONL 241. I signed up for the course because I felt I needed inspiration and started to feel a bit stuck in my thinking and in my approach to work. It was truly the right choice! We have completed topic 1, and it has been a great journey.

I am part of a PBL group with a lot of energy and incredibly nice people. We come from different parts of the world and have completely different experiences of the digital world connected to teaching and students. During our first work, we talked a lot about anxiety in various forms, both how it is present in teachers, students, and at an institutional level. We delved into what the problems consisted of and concluded that they existed at different levels depending on whether the problem was experienced by students, teachers, or the institution. However, we could all agree that a common denominator for everyone was the feeling that there was not enough training when it came to digital tools, creating online courses, and living as a teacher or student in the digital world. We could also agree that there was a lack of continued support for both teachers and students.

We were all forced into various digital solutions during Covid, so more or less everyone associated with universities has a lot of experience. But all the solutions that emerged during that period came quickly and were often makeshift. There was no time to do anything properly, and there were no opportunities to delve into different ways of working. When the more acute situation with Covid was over, everyone felt so relieved to return to the usual way of working. I get the feeling at my workplace that anything related to digitalization is associated with the difficult years during Covid, and it is difficult to implement new technology because of these negative feelings.

During topic 1, our group has truly had the opportunity to explore our fears but also the incredibly many solutions available. I look forward to continuing to work within this course and continue exploring different aspects of digitalization in relation to teaching.