The first “real” week of the ONL course has passed. A week where the feelings of excitement and overwhelming have been running in parallel. The uncertainty of what we, as students should do, together with the use of new technologies and platforms has generated many questions in my head. Unfortunately, still nothing that important to beat my eagerness to learn more about online possibilities to teach and learn.

I have been thinking about the subject for this first week, “connecting”. At first, it seems something easy where social abilities may do the job. However, I have recently had problems during different types of online communication, with e-mails and messages being wrongly interpreted. Indeed, to connect in the new online word requires much more than the traditional social skills. Rules to communicate and connect with each other should be established, together with general guidelines and states of mind to read what others try to tell you, and thus avoid potential misunderstandings. As expected, we did that within our PBL group during our first meeting. This first meeting was very positive, and made me think that despite the multiple possibilities to communicate in the online teaching/learning environment, face-to-face meetings (not necessarily “campus-type” meetings) are a must to maintain a successful communication during teaching-learning activities.

Since I am somewhat familiarized with PBL methods, I read the recommended article by Kek and Huijser (2015), entitled 21^stcentury skills: problem based learning and the university of future. For those that have not checked this article, it presents a framework for university studies where PBL is the central method, where all the components of the university, including administration, teachers, students… are involved and benefit from. One of the key points presented is the fact that teachers need to adapt as much as possible, but also teaching the students to adapt themselves too. Adaptability in the ever-changing, online society where we live now will be a key ability to have. If we as teachers, are able to prepare our students to “adapt, be flexible and agile in thinking, feeling and doing” (Kek & Hijser 2015, page 410), we will be preparing life-long learners, a must in the professions of the present/future. Therefore, it is very important for us as teachers not to be afraid of the changes that are currently happening in our once “safe and stable” university environment, but we should embrace the change and give a meaning to all those changes. Easy to say, let’s see how easy is to develop this in our own environments!