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!
Open Learning 