The end of the course. Honestly, I am relief. It has been quite some additional workload to my already-busy agenda that I will not miss. Yet, I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to follow this course and learn so many different and interesting aspects of online learning. But if I have to highlight something about this course is my PBL group (including the facilitators!). We started bit slow, but then we got to a point where we were actually closer to a group of friends than to a group of students. This transition has facilitated our work and made all our discussions and assignments a fun and productive project.

It is not only me, the entire group has the same feeling. We have actually focused on our group dynamics to prepare our last assignment, which you can visit here:https://www.emaze.com/@AOFWLTOQZ/topic-5-lessons-learnt

As pointed out in our presentation, one of the aspects that boosted our group interaction was the fact that we started a WhatsApp group. The informal communication in this platform made us be closer to each other, and share more things that “just” course-related issues. However, I think we would have never reached the level of comradeship without all the members being engaged, responsible, and delivering the assigned individual tasks. Without this, trust (essential for positive group dynamics) would have been non-existing.

The only problem I have now is how to implement this to my online courses. Should I tell the students to make groups only with their friends? I do not think so. And I cannot “force” them to open informal channels of communication either, since this can be considered intruding their personal space. Right now, I do not have a clear plan. I need more time to think about how to implement my super-positive group experience in my learning. I hope I can come up with ideas to do so. But if you have any suggestion, please let me know!

Have a great day!

Photo by: Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalo – CC BY-NC-ND