Topic 5. End and beginning.

“Endings are beginnings- if we allow them to be”

Laura Day.

PBL2 Journey. Imaged created by Crisitina Paniagua CCO.

This is the last post that I am going to write belonging to the ONL course. This week is the final week for the course and it is time to reflect upon what we have achieved during these months.

Time flies. It seems that it was yesterday when we meet the first time. In general, I quite happy with this experience and especially I am very grateful for my PBL group. Nevertheless, when I try to compare the expectative that I had with the final result the balance is not completely positive. We found ourselves very often confused about what we were learning.

If I had to highlight the positive aspects, I will choose:

Collaboration– Collaboration is the first word that comes to my mind when I think about this course. Everything has moved around the group and how we collaborate. Collaborate is hard, in person or online. We decided to focus on the collaboration process and learn from it.

Renovated mindset– If we want to change the system we need to change ourselves first. Recognize all the difficulties and challenges that carry online learning is the first step to evolve our mindset in the right direction.

If you ask me if these two outcomes are what I was expecting of this course I will tell you no. Collaboration is important in our lives, as a researcher and teacher I know that, but definitely is not what I was expecting as an outcome of an online learning course. I realize that in the different topics I have learned things about blended learning [1], collaboration and cooperation [2], pedagogical frameworks [3], and digital literacy [4]. However, I feel that I hardly grasped the surface of these topics, that I did not learn as much as I expected. I know now what my deficits are as a teacher in the digital environment. This course provides a good base for self-assessment, but it has not provided (at least to me) the answer to my questions.

I want to finalize this post just by commenting on the image above. I drew the image based on what we thought as a group of the experience. We were together in the journey and we supported each other during the storms. Each animal represents one of us . The journey has not been calm but I can see the light at the end. We have learned where to start and how we are stronger as a group. This is just the beginning of our own journey to be excellent educators in online and physical settings.

Thank you to everyone that participated and organized this course, and a warm thank you to my group members.

Cristina. 

References

[1] Rasheed, Rasheed Abubakar, Amirrudin Kamsin, and Nor Aniza Abdullah. “Challenges in the online component of blended learning: A systematic review.” Computers & Education 144 (2020): 103701.

[2] Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3)

[3] Engeness, Irina. “Developing teachers’ digital identity: towards the pedagogic design principles of digital environments to enhance students’ learning in the 21st century.” European Journal of Teacher Education 44.1 (2021): 96-114.

[4] White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9).