The ONL181-course, the reason why I'm blogging, is on the half way now. After the journey of first few weeks I was a bit confused. I wasn't sure if I was even on the map. The digi-world seemed to be too overwhelming. I was struggling at a swamp and going on only because of the duckboards and good company.
Now I have got back my peace of mind. It obviously just took some time to get used to the practise of online course and especially online collaboration. It was a very useful lesson to learn. Now I can feel the possible anxiousness of a student who attends an online course.
The previous topic we have been dealing with is openness. Fortunately it has meant many things in our own PBL (Problem Based Learning) group, including being open about the feelings and challenges on the course. In the larger picture we have talked a lot about openness in education. It actually covers much more than I ever thought. It's not just opening up your course online. It's not just sharing you materials with students and colleagues. Openness in education has so many aspects, like accessibility and flexibility.
So far openness has meant only few things for my own practise. It has been mostly the attitude and urge of sharing ideas and materials with colleagueas and students. Especially with co-workers one of the biggest reasons for sharing has been the idea of not inventing a wheel over and over again. As a Finnish language teacher I don't need to be too scared of someone stealing or abusing my materials or ideas. I'm not a researcher, I'm a teacher and learning tutor. On some other field the situation might be quite different.
As I'm going to build my first online course soon, it has been very useful to think about different open course and MOOC formats and learn some terms for them. The learning platform I'm going to use is open for the students of my university or open university. That way the course will be closed and one of the benefits in that is that the size of the group enables teacher's personal feedback. In future it would be great to open the course for larger target group but then also the management of the course should be planned differently, especially if it would be possible to get credits of it.
Even if I still have a way to go, now I feel I'm on the right path. I got through the swamps and dark forrests and I have climbed high enough to see everywhere. I can see open space all around me, also the higher tops I'm heading to. Right now I'll just keep going and enjoy the views.
I like the metaphor of hiking through unknown terrain. When your online course is ready I might be interested in participating! It depends on the level really.
VastaaPoistaThanks Jepa, for sharing your thoughts. I was struggling, too, and I am still struggling. My sense of online learning is that it is a lot about keeping on to struggle. The soothing thing that I learned is that there is always a rather comfortably achievable solution to the struggle. I have the impression that this very much reflects the nature of online learning: It is not as in the old days, when I went to school, about compiling vast amounts of information pieces, but rather about struggling for the right tools to access the relevant information and turn it into a useful resource.
VastaaPoistaThanks for being such a good company during my very first steps on that interesting hike!
Gregor