Topic 5 ..Lessons Learnt – Future Practice – All the blog posts from the #onl181 community

The end of one journey and start of another….

As this ONL course comes to closing it is actually new beginning for me. I walk away with a new skill, knowledge, perspectives and most importantly a new list academic contacts. This has been one of the most amazing journeys in my academic career. ONL has opened my mind to endless possibilities and ideas that am eager to try in my own creation of online learning programmes. Before I began the course I though that my digital literacy skills where well developed but as the course progressed I began to see my digital skills was just the tip of the iceberg and this course was going to introduce me to world of online learning unknown to me.

In the first topic we discussed residents and visitors which was mind opening experience to me. It made step back and look at myself, evaluate my digital interaction online. Understanding my own online interaction also made me view how students interacted digitally which is vital when creating an online course. This was also the key to understanding students better. It is also important to evaluate your work and receive feedback to improve online learning. Creating an environment of openness is important to making the course more approachable to students. Working on the FISh document also showed me how people can work together even they are unable to attend the meetings. I will certainly be using this.

When we moved on to topic 2 It was interesting to learn about of creative commons. This was completely new to me. I always had questions of what can or can’t be shared online and Topic 2 clarified this for me.

Personally topic 3 had the biggest impact on me. It provided information on how to ensure groups works collaboratively and that we need some comfortable learning environments that will allow for students to embrace each other’s diversity.

I have started implementing what have learnt from ONL in my online courses most especially the lessons from topic 4.I now apply the ICEBERG theory when creating my courses. This theory if applied correctly can prevent student from dropping out if . PBL12 group student dropping out of online course and it was interesting to hear my fellow group members views on this as it only helps to improve your online/blended course.

ONL and PBL group members have introduce me valuable tools to be used in online learning. Padlet, Canva, Emaze, Popplet, Metimeter are some the tools I have been introduced to which I will be certainly trying out.

Apart from developing my online digital and social skills there were also relationships built. The PBL 12 are going to remain in contact and will meet to celebrate our birthdays online and since my birthday is first up I’m looking forward to starting this tradition. I was pleased to be part of such an interesting and diverse group.

My suggestion for ONL is to create a big community for all past ONL students have access to so where can always stay in touch and share our future experiences with each other. This community will always keep us linked together and also allow us to share new information with each as well as share how we are practice our teaching and lessons learnt from this course. This has been an incredible journey and it something every academic involved in online learning should experience. A phrase that will stay with me forever that was mentioned in our first PBL 12 group meeting “Be comfortable in your discomfort zone” and that’s what I intend on doing…..time to put these new skills to practice