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Reflections on course literature

The 5 stage model of Gilly Salmon (2013) is really interesting and next semester I will make use of it both as a teacher and as a director of studies. This while it is essential for the learning outcome that students from the very beginning get to know how to handle learning and e-tivities. Quite often, as a teacher I have supposed that the students are at stage 3 or 4 when the course starts… The design of the Gilly Salmon page is attractive and inviting: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

The article below is connected to one of the course webinars. It suggests how to give instructions in order to build a Community of Inquiry (CoI). For this purpose the three concepts of presence according to Garrison, Andersson and Archer (2000) are used: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence.

Although the different presences were explained at the webinar, it was useful to read about them afterwards realizing that they are the pillars of CoI and provide a sense of meaning if they are allowed to permeate teaching, learning and social activities. Fascinating to see the summary of instructional activities, some of them have been claimed by the students in my courses, others are already included:)

Fiock, H. (2020). Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 135-153.

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Topic 5

  • Tho most important things I have learnt through this ONL course are the following: 1) Learning online is really fun. Even if the environment is different from campus, it’s still possible to learn by and from each other if all the members of the community are aware of how to communicate online. That is what happened in our pbl group. I will never forget the mutual confidence we gained through whatsapp communication, fruitful conversations/discussions and silent moments of collaboration on googledocs while preparing our final presentation of a topic:) 2) What it’s like to be a student in an online environment, from the first confused steps in order to understand the structure of the course till how well group activities may work. In the beginning I found the structure quite abstract and with a lot of different tasks and work to be done. What “saved” these initial worries were the pbl-group activities leaded by the friendly, proficient and supportive group facilitators, Cecilia and Charlotta!
  • What I’ve learnt from this course helps me to improve my own practice in several ways: 1) different useful tools that I did not know how to handle: googledoc, padlet, prezi, miro…, 2) find out about other useful tools, awareness of group activities and learning outcome (not too many tasks), 3) give the groups different tasks so that the final presentations are a part of one topic), 4) make the students work in fixed smaller groups outside the webinars, 5) ask students to act as facilitators during the main sessions, 6) remember that openness is not a threat, rather an asset if we handle it in the right way.
  • Regarding the use of technology to enhance learning I feel less worried and lost than before (no problem if I do something wrong, nobody will “yell” at me). It is also important to accept the impossibility of learning everything – and in this sense the support from the students is of great value. If they know how to use a padlet and I don’t, nothing prevents them from using it:)
  • As a result of my involvement in ONL the improvement process has already began. My attitude to online teaching has changed from doubtful and unconfortable to active, open and confortable:) By organizing the group activities and my webinars in a problem based way, teaching online has become more efficient and varied. The next step will be to find out what strategies would be used to make the examinations less time consuming.
  • To keep on teaching, the most important thing is to keep on learning, always reflecting upon how to use the knowledge acquired in your own practice. Except from the above mentioned aspects, there are some more in my case: because of being a director of studies the coming three years (English, Interculture and Spanish) the main issue will be to encourage my colleagues to attend to the coming ONL courses on the one hand and, on the other, to motivate increased needs of resources from the university board in order to develop teaching and learning in an online environment.