Weeks starting 29 October & 5 November 2018

This was the beginning of topic 3 – learning in communities and collaborative learning. This was the topic that excited me from the beginning as learning in communities is something that I believe has huge value and always try to encourage my students to practice. However, I do acknowledge that it must be practiced when fit-for-purpose and there must be clear guidelines and goals and effective communication.

This was the topic that I co-lead with Anna, a member of my PBL group and that in itself, was really good collaboration as opposed to co-operation. We did our groundwork, understanding of the topic (and resources provided) and preparation before our separate meetings (just the two of us). Anna and I had not separated what we were doing when discussing as this would have been more co-operation, rather than collaboration. We both prepped the same material, discussed, identified common/differing views and then decided together on what we wanted to discuss/focus on when meeting with the others in our group. We lead the discussions but other members provided new viewpoints, which created a different discussion and sometimes focus – true ONL181 collaboration.

I found the two recommended articles very valuable for my teaching practice. The one article discussed frustrations that online learners experience with collaborative learning while the second article provided strategies for creating effective collaborative groups in an online space.

I teach only face-to-face and not online sessions but I want to incorporate some online teaching into my usual teaching mode in the new academic year. I found that many of the frustrations discussed in the article are not only those experienced by online students. These are frustrations that my students have also experienced in various modules that require group tasks – some of it being different levels of commitment, poor communication and the lack of shared goals.

The second article provides recommendations and strategies on creative effective collaboration with learning groups. Some of the strategies that I believe will be valuable in my context and on my part, as the educator:

• are providing very clear instructions and expectations and requirements of the students
• spending sufficient time and thought in the learning design of the task – make it relevant and meaningful to students
• providing regular monitoring and feedback to students
• spend time on encouraging the relationships amongst students in the group and a sense of community

(Brindley, Walti and Blaschke – 2009)

This was indeed a very valuable and relevant topic in my development towards teaching in an online environment. Now, I just need to get my teeth into it:).