In the end of one journey - in the beginning of another one

Every great journey ends some day. ONL181 course has been a more exciting trip than I ever thought. I have learned a lot about open networked learning. As I'm planning to design soon an oneline course for Finnish language students, the most valuable thing in participating such a good online course by myself was the experience of being a student on an online course. I had an opportunity to see many valuable things from the student's perspective.

One of the main things I learned, is the importance of scheduling and informing about the deadlines and criterias. On this course I really liked the clear timeteble and deadlines, and we even had checklists after each topic so everyone could ensure everything is done so far. All kinds of guidance and facilitation was excellent. For instance there were a lot of instruction videos in the beginning and the facilitator and co-fasilitator were available if any help was needed. I really hadn't thought earlier how much a teacher or course designer can do to avoid students getting frustrated or feeling unsure.

I think the most enlightening inspiration for me on the course was realising the meaning of true collaboration. I was lucky to have such a supporting and nice PBL (Problem Based Learning) group that really worked together. So far I had always thought that group work is all about chemistry and that can't work properly from distance. Now I understand it's much more than that. It's more about understanding the collaboration as constructioning knowledge together and utilizing the strenghts of each group member. We really have to go on from the school mode group work that meant dividing the tasks in smaller independently made parts and then glueing them onto the same board. I also found out that true collaboration makes people more committed to the course. The group or community also gives strenght and holds up when someone is too busy, tired, lost or whatever.

All the way, from the very first blog post I wrote, I have used the metaphora of hiking and exploring the nature that is my true passion. In every blog I have somehow underlined the importance of the company. I still do, I'm obviously a true lemming. This time it came to my mind that the group that holds you up on challenging course is as vital as the group that is connected to you with a rope on glacier. The group is your only hope if you happen to fall into a fault. You have to trust them. I think the most of the learners need the support a group can give, but it's not the only truth anyway. There are always those who rather go solo, both in adventuring and learning.

How everything I have learned will influense my practise in future? I hope I can keep on my mind these key things I just described. They are especially important when designing my first online course. The influence at this level is more pedagogic in general: What to do and why? On a more practical level I also learned some nice new tools I want to try on all of my courses. In language teaching/learning quite many applications (like Kahoot!) are already in common use but now I think I can see better when and why to use them. The nice tools and having some fun can't be the purpose itself, there has to be a pedagogic reason to use them.

So far in the Language Center of Aalto University there have been mostly traditional courses with contact lessons. The requirement of contact teaching has been quite obvious especially because of the need of speaking practise. Recently the mood has changed a bit. One of my colleagues created an online course Introductory Finnish and the idea was that foreign students and staff members could learn some Finnish even before arriving Finland and also everyone else interested in Finnish could access the course from distance. The type of the course is MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and it has been a huge success. The accessibility seems to be the key even if Finnish is very small and rare language.

In my own teaching I have faced another kind of need for accessibility. I have taught many courses at the highest level of Finnish and the volume is nothing like on basic courses. It's always quite problematic to find enough so advanced students to the highest level courses. Quite often they are already at least partly working and they can't attend normal courses.The problem is exactly the same everywhere. The most advanced students can't find the suitable courses and where ever those courses are arranged, there still aren't enough students.

Right now I'm participating a national ministry-funded project called DIGIJOUJOU. The target is to create some digipedagogy and digimaterial for Finnish and Swedish (both official national languages in Finland) to be utilised both at universities and universities of applied sciences. As one result of the project I'm now designing a very advanced Finnish online course for professional needs with one of my colleagues. Even if we are now building the course at first for our own students, the idea is that after piloting the course we could also offer it for all the students in higher education over university boundaries. I'm really excited and looking forward to see how it will work.

So, even if my ONL181 journey is in the end, I think my journey in the world of e-learning has just begun. I'm just a rookie but one thing I know now for sure. My path to the mysterious world of e-learning isn't scary any more. It's only fascinating.