Weeks starting 26 November 2018

So, this week was the last week of my ONL181 journey. A journey that I describe as a huge learning curve, self-discovery and elimination of pre-conceptions and perceptions. I’ve chosen to pick out snippets from each of my blog posts (in blue) – those that I find important and relevant to my reflections on the course. I will comment briefly on each.

Firstly, I am very excited by the prospect of engaging with people from all over the world – Zimbabwe, Norway, Sweden, Singapore (to name just a few) and of course, good ‘ole SA.

I had the opportunity to engage with people from all over the world in my PBL group and also during the breakout sessions during some webinars. It is comforting to realise that mostly, we share the same challenges, experiences and passion for our students and teaching.

I’m definitely looking forward to engaging more with my group as the weeks progress – everyone is very knowledgeable and nice:).

This was definitely one of the highlights of my ONL181 journey – working with my PBL group and our facilitators. They remained very knowledgeable and nice:). We all have different contexts in which we work but I appreciated that we could all share and discuss our experiences and differences freely. It was also very enlightening to hear the differences with our students, teaching methodologies and strategies and teaching environment. 

We were all at different levels of digital literacy with me being quite “green” but even this was accommodated, where I could ask even the silliest question. I learnt SO much from all the amazing people in my group. Thank you.

I then had my first PBL group meeting using Zoom – which I did not even know existed:). I pleasantly realised how easy it is to use. I am not generally comfortable and familiar with online chats but it was very easy and not intimidating…

This was one of the simplest things but one that I most appreciated learning or rather becoming familiar with. I am now very comfortable to implement this with my students, using a similar platform.

I have learnt about two new tools – Padlet and Webjets, which have been discussed and used by our PBL group. I can already see myself using Padlet as a tool in my teaching… I really look forward to learning about a few more tools that I could use.

I have since learnt about coggle, google slides, voicethread, powtoons… I’ve realised that there are many tools that are not difficult to use (previous pre-conceptions) and I look forward to trying out a few, fit for purpose in the next academic year.

I was very ignorant of the different terminologies like creative commons, copyright and OER/OEP. Both Alastair and Kay explained the concepts in a very simplified manner, resulting me in now understanding and being able to use these effectively.

I’ve often heard these concepts being used by my colleagues without fully understanding what they are or how they are used. I now understand:).

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.

I think that our PBL group, as a whole, worked collaboratively really well. It was a new experience working collaboratively online, which I particularly experienced when I had to co-lead the discussions on topic 3. I must admit that I did not find it too different or difficult from the collaboration that I usually experience. I’m really glad that I experienced this as I will use it when I incorporate this into my teaching.

In my teaching context, which is predominantly contact, face-to-face teaching, I want to incorporate more blended learning. Our current teaching model is based on blended learning but I believe that I have been doing the minimum required and I want to develop more of this in the new academic year.

I can easily identify with Salmon’s, Five Stage Model. I think that I am already implementing stages one to three quite well. I need to focus on developing stages four and five. Stage four is to encourage/facilitate discussions and collaborative interactions between students in the online space and stage five is students gaining benefits from the online learning, learning integration into their own context and then reflecting. (Salmon, 2005).

As this is a relatively new space for both my students and I, I acknowledge that I will have to fulfill the following roles, as identified by Berge (1995):

• Pedagogical role – I will need to create discussions which will based mostly on activities applying the theory to a real-life, practical situation.
• Social role – This would be easier for me as I see the students in face-to-face sessions on a weekly basis. 
• Managerial role
• Technical role – This would be my greatest challenge and focus of development as I would need to make my students comfortable with our learning management system, tools and software.

The above are extracts from my blog post on my reflections on topic 4. These discuss how my learning during ONL will influence my teaching practice and what I’m going to do as a results of being on the ONL journey.

So, that brings to an end my exciting, learning-filled, social-enhancing and sometimes overwhelming journey. I am very grateful to have experienced this.