Now the “real thing” has started. It was nice to participate in the online meeting last Monday. It seems all my group colleagues are engaged with the course, and luckily for me, they also have many questions to solve about online teaching/learning!

I watched the videos given as resources. They were very interesting. I was vaguely aware of the “visitor vs. resident” perspective from previous pedagogic courses, but now I must say I have got a deeper insight on the issue. These days I have been thinking that in the majority of the cases we speak about visitor and/or resident students. But I was wondering, what about the teachers?  Should we all be residents to be able to do our online teaching properly? Or can a teacher using online tools be a “mere” visitor of such tools and still provide high-quality online education? If we need to be residents, are we all willing to invest all the time needed for that? I am not sure, maybe these are naïve questions, but it is kind of confusing to think about framing my students while I cannot even frame myself in the resident/visitor perspective. Maybe someone can give some advice?

Another aspect I have given some thought to is the frustration feeling that can appear during online courses, mainly at the beginning. I had a few students last semester that, when the course finished, told me they were a bit frustrated when the course started, mainly because they considered the information was not enough. However, other students actually congratulate me and the other teachers for the “great” information provided at the beginning of the course, which facilitated all their work. Then I think, what type of information should we provide to avoid frustrated students? Is it even possible to offer good information for all the students? While I believe the information provided by the teacher is critical to avoid the initial frustrating feeling, I think the students should take the initiative and look for the information themselves (to certain extent). Is it realistic to hope for this in semester-one students?

I am not sure this blog will provide any help to anyone since I only have questions! Anyway, it may at least help to see a different perspective of the topic. In any case, I hope you, the reader, enjoyed it !