REFLECTING ON THE JOURNEY, STEPPING INTO THE FUTURE

Our PBL7 group approached topic 5 by asking ourselves as participants what we had learnt under each of the four topics. What follows here is my responses to each topic:

Topic 1: Online Participation & Digital Literacies

“I learnt that whether you are from the global north or global south we are all learning! “ Topic 1 dealt with digital identity – external and personal classification based on one’s interaction with the digital world. Being South African, I don’t like imposed identities and this is what the authors of the required reading seemed to do! A chip on the shoulder revealed? My caption indicates the basis for our participation in this module. What the digital world demonstrated for me was the levelling of the so-called playing field. Our geographic identities were irrelevant. We all simply wanted to learn.

Topic 2: Open Learning - Sharing & Openness

 

“I learnt…with appropriate protective measures, it is possible for one to share ideas online without your knowledge work being misappropriated.” This topic confirmed for many participants their fear of loss – their work being stolen, misappropriated and as academics not receiving acknowledgement which is linked to promotion. There was a fear among many of us of venturing into what was perceived as an unregulated space. I am reminded of a song that goes “don’t go chasing waterfalls…stick to rivers and the lakes that you are used to.” As participants we had to consider why we were not using or contributing to various commons. We learnt about citing the different types of permissions attached to open source materials. The tweet chat also opened up a proverbial new world for me. I have tweeted once or twice, something random but interesting to me. The ONL forced me to participate in an online tweet chat session, which was for me a nudge to venture beyond boundaries I had created for myself. I promised myself that I would stop hugging the coastline and begin to sail beyond the horizon.

Topic 3: Learning in Communities - Networked & Collaborative Learning

“I learnt…in this topic how our collaboration resulted in resolution. At one point there was too much material and we collectively contributed to sifting and sorting in order to give the presenters something to work with. The end result was impressive.” There was collaboration and as in the previous two topics no competiveness, no dominating personalities vying for their opinion to prevail over all others. We experienced a great deal of support from our facilitators as well who epitomised and brought to life Salmon’s (2013) “host” and “guide”, scaffolding and knowledge construction. Salute!

Topic 4: Design for Online & Blended Learning

“I learnt what it means to be a good facilitator. We had great mentors.” My colleague Viktoria wrote I learnt that there are no perfect educational model that will meet all pedagogical needs and fit all purposes.” And Lars wrote: “I learnt that modelling is a very important business in e-pedagogics. I am not convinced of single models, or multiple either, in the pot of a successful course in a name of evidence based or perhaps ‘research based’. There are no perfect models and I think we learn also from the design-mistakes of others. Having attempted and resigned from a online module last year, Bigg’s constructive alignment was of personal relevance. Constructive alignment – designing learning and having assessments and tasks that match the module outcomes is crucial to creating happy learners. For me constructive alignment must link to purpose – don’t assign readings or test students on content that is not relevant. I don’t need to know how the hard drive on my computer is assembled in order to learn about blended learning.

 

In this module we learnt much about pedagogy – about learning and how learning happens and how learning can happen in the online space. In my opinion, this module was well-designed. The readings were chosen well. Not only were they directly relevant to the problem that needed solving but there were articles of varying lengths which allowed us as learners to gain knowledge and perspective even if on some days we were not able to complete all of the readings. Although I don’t recall reading the learning objective of this course anywhere, we were definitely given an opportunity to practice an outcome that was revealed by each topic. The incorporation of digital tools was the proverbial other side of the coin. We discussed our initial ideas using Collaborate. We collaboratively compiled our thoughts (and we had many) in a FISh document and then ‘forced’ to present our collaborative efforts in a different digital format from those we were accustomed to. Our facilitators were helpful in pointing out what the possibilities were.

Topic 5: Lessons Learnt - Future Practice

“I want to…use everything that I have learnt. I feel extremely empowered to use this information in my personal ministry.” I spent a lot of my time imagining other spaces in which the skills I acquired in this course may be used.

Conclusion:

I don't have enough online experience in order to critically evaluate this course. As my colleagues have pointed out, there is no perfect educational model and one cannot simply cut and past pedagogies. So we must adapt - ourselves and our teaching and our strategies so that at the end of the module, our students have learnt something and we have achieved our module objects. I am leaving this ONL course feeling inspired.

References:

John Biggs – constructive alignment [Homepage]  http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/constructive-alignment/


Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. [Homepage]
 http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html