More than two
months ago, I wrote a post entitled Fresh start with a nice view: I was about to reactivate my old blog while I still enjoyed my last autumn
vacation day in Italy. I remember being slightly stressed looking forward to
two months of learning with strangers from all over the world. I was a bit
scared because I knew it would require quite some time and effort and I did not
exactly know what to expect from the Open Networked Learning course.

After
familiarizing myself with the course environment, I joined the introduction
webinar and got to know the course team. The Google+ community started getting
busy with loads of postings and I first met the other members of my assigned PBL group. Connecting with so many people was quite overwhelming and I struggled to keep up
with all of the bee-like activity all over the place. Reading about Online participation & digital
literacies – the first course
topic – and sharing thoughts and experiences with my PBL group was very helpful
at this point. I realized that everybody else was also struggling along and
this was somewhat normal during this initial phase.

We organised
our collaboration and established a few ground rules like acknowledging other
group members’ postings to Google+ or checking on Google Drive for new
contributions. I gained confidence and the PBL group already collaborated quite
efficient on the second topic: Open learning – sharing and openness. Consequently, when working through the next topic – Learning in communities – we were already able to reflect on our own experiences and identified
essential factors for a working learning community.

By then I
realized how well designed the ONL course is and it was the right time to think
about Design for online and blended
learning – the last topic of the course.
My personal take-away here was that sound learning design is very important,
but it cannot guarantee successful learning experiences because every learning
community is unique.

Today it is
cold and rainy outside and this is my final blog post related to ONL. The
course did require quite some time – about eight hours per week – but what I
have learnt over the last two months was definitely worth the effort. And
although I am happy it is over now I am going to miss the weekly
videoconferences with my learning group. This is probably the biggest learning
from ONL – that it is possible to form an efficient, effective, inspiring,
personal and motivating online learning community in only two months.

Many thanks to
the ONL181 team who made this possible!