The pandemic put all our teaching online for a prolonged time. This enormous change of education put a thousands of challenges, and made teachers all over the globe to rethink their ways of teaching. Now, one and a half year later, all teachers have actually done it. We did put teaching in online setting, for better or worse. We did change all the ways of giving lectures, of lending in works, of meeting and discussing online together.

Now is perhaps the point of putting the really interesting question: What has the pandemic taught us? What methods and ways of thinking should we bring on and implement in the future?

But to start, this first weeks is about our individual mark online, and our digital footprint. I have always seen myself as a pretty digital savvy person, using computer from the age of 7,doing basic programming from age 10 already. I would probably use the term Native user, to use Prensky’s term. But this being said, I still had a hard time adapting to the new normal, with working online and finding new ways to connect to people. A year of experimenting simply.

The first weeks of ONL is now ended, and I starting to understand the rather new way of working together, with the course completely online on a website and forums, and two Zoom meetings every week discussing the content and producing group output. Listening to David White’s seminar made me think of how active your are in a digital world, if you just stay passive and listen and learn, or if you engage more frequently.

We had a very intersting discussion in our group about what kind of platform to use in online meeting, social media for instance. We decided to dig in to popular platform for connecting with people like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Blog and Podcasts, and how to use them for best output. This was mainly a group effort, where we were pretty aligned in the group on how to use different media in different ways.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  1. Michael Todorovic, Elisabeth Coyne, Vinod Gopalan, Youn Oh, Lila Landowski & Matthew Barton (2020) Twelve tips for using Facebook as a learning platform, Medical Teacher, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1854708
  2. Nitza Davidovitch, Margarita Belichenko (2018) Using Facebook in Higher Education: Exploring Effects on Social Climate, Achievements, and Satisfaction, International Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 7, Nr. 1, 2018, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v7n1p51
  3. Sheeran, N., Cummings, D.J. An examination of the relationship between Facebook groups attached to university courses and student engagement. High Educ 76, 937–955 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0253-2
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  6. Johannesen, M., Mifsud, L. & Øgrim, L. Identifying Social Presence in Student Discussions on Facebook and Canvas. Tech Know Learn 24, 641–657 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-018-9362-3