Fixing a hole

This is it. The course ended, I still have one blog to write, and I just don't seem to find enough time to write it... A little slot here and another there...

Used under Creative Commons Licence CC0.

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-apple-fruit-with-hole-161615/

At the beginning of ONL, three months ago, I hoped—no, I anticipated—that this journey would be magical. And it was. And quite a ride it was too. Finding sufficient time for all the course activities was a challenging juggling act between professional and family life. How rapidly time flew.

Right from the beginning, I realised that there were gaping holes in my knowledge on things online. I had read about digital literacy, digital natives, and creative commons without sacrificing much thought to understanding what the terms really meant. The apprehensions I had about being online and sharing information with the cyberpublic were shared by many of my coursemates, as was evident from the numerous course blogs and blog comments I read.  Obviously this course was going to help me fix those holes. Reading up on digital literacy began dispelling my unfounded fears, the first of many holes fixed. Sara Mörtsell's webinar (2017) and the video resources by David White opened my eyes to what digital literacies entail, the skills and knowledge required to navigate and reside 'safely' online, how we can use the Creative Commons Licence to share information online... Our PBL group work deepened this knowledge. My mind began wandering, exploring the possibilities of 'civilised' use of the seemingly endless resources on the Internet. This was just the prelude to what was to come.

Teresa MacKinnon's webinar on open education along with the resources on sharing and openness was the next logical step, naturally. Her tale of how she became an 'open practitioner' was intriguing and exciting. This was my first real glimpse to what sharing and openness online could be. It wasn't just about sharing things or files containing information, music or videos as I narrow-mindedly thought, it was about sharing knowledge, expertise, experience, networks...! I now heard of slideshare.net for the first time. I was now fixing a large crack in my preconception of what sharing was. The sharing I had dabbled in with my university colleagues was anything but... By this time I had what I thought was a healthy awareness of the what, why and how of online presence and the digital footprint left. I'm not very literate digitally yet, but I've come  long way from when I began this course.

Alec Couros's webinar on openness and collaborative learning blew my mind. Seeing what can be achieved through open collaboration on the Internet even with total strangers was unbelievable. Lots of people are good, and they want to do good things because they are good, which shows in the achievements when people collaborate. The group work we engaged in made distinctions between cooperation and collaboration, words I thought were practically synonyms in the context of learning and teaching. Realising the difference between the two changed the way we worked in our group from cooperating (dividing the workload, working individually on our own little piece, and finally putting the lot together) to collaborating (dividing and working on the our own piece as before, but now commenting on each others work making it evolve before putting the lot together). This topic made the biggest impression on me.

The webinar on design for online and blended learning by Martha Cleveland-Innes and Stefan Stenblom along with the other resources made me understand that when building an online course one needs to pay a great deal of attention to how encourage interaction and engagement between participants and between participants and teachers that lead to collaboration, perhaps even more than for a 'normal' course. Looking at course design through the lens of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence brought structure to course design both normal and online. It explained why ONL was implemented the way it was. I realised that I had unknowingly followed a lot of the advice in the resources on this topic when designing my normal courses, which created the illusion in my mind that our group work would be a breeze. However, at least for me, it turned out that this was in many ways the most difficult group assignment; so many abstract concepts to be worked into a concrete presentation, how differently and perhaps vaguely we understood what we wanted to do as a group, so little time to work... Nonetheless, the resulting presentation was our best, I thought. A result of great collaboration and different points of view.

The last webinar brought on a feeling of loss, of longing, of gratefulness for having been able to participate. It also left a feeling of hope and gain: gain in the sense that I now have a community of great people, particularly my PBL group mates, to whom I can turn to when in need just like they can turn to me when in need. I now have a personal learning network, whose importance is immeasurable, as stressed many times during this course.

So, where do I go from here? Presently I don't have teaching obligations, at least not the kind where I have full responsibility for what is taught and how, so I cannot apply directly what I have learned. I can try and influence my colleagues to go online, and there is pressure from the system for them to do so. I can also try to convince my peers to engage in openness, but I know I have a long and winding road ahead of me on that score. However, I can take a few concrete steps myself. I can openly share the teaching material I have created, and I can encourage my colleagues to participate in the next ONL. And, perhaps, time permitting I could volunteer as a co-facilitator.

References

Sara Mörtsell, Webinar on digital literacies. 21 February 2017. https://connect.sunet.se/p3sh16fn392/?proto=true

David White. Visitors and residents (part 1).10 March 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watchv=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be

David White. Visitors and residents: Credibility (part 2). 10 March 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO569eknM6U&feature=youtu.be

Teresa MacKinnon. Open education. 9 March 2017. https://connect.sunet.se/p4w69agso07/

Alec Couros. Collaborative learning. 22 March 2017. https://opennetworkedlearning.wordpress.com/onl171-course-activities/topic-3-learning-in-communities-networked-collaborative-learning/

Martha Cleveland-Innes and Stefan Stenblom. Design for online and blended learning. 4 April 2017.
slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_GGSq3gROWfOG10elZVUHpaY0E/view