Topic 1: Online participation & digital literacies - Reflections by Chamara
Topic 1: Online participation & digital literacies
The COVID19 pandemic made us maintain most of our
connections online and teaching was part of it too. Thus, I thought of taking
this online open network learning (ONL) course to dive a bit deep to make this
unfamiliar area more familiar. At the end of this course, my objective is to be
more efficient and effective in teaching in an online environment. WOW! what an
experience so far. Meeting new people around the world and working in a fun way
to achieve a common goal. So, we have just finished our first ONL211 task (Topic
1: Online participation & digital literacies) and now it’s time to give
out my reflections about what I have learned from this topic.
In this digital era, the majority of people who has a
smartphone and internet connection are spending a lot of time online using
online platforms and tools. However, each one of us has different objectives
and goals when using these online platforms and tools. Each of us plays a
different role when participating in an online activity. The method of analysis
given by David White and Alisson Le Cornu help us to understand this role in a better
way.
Figure 1: A detailed Digital Visitors and Residents map of online engagement
When I did my own analysis, I was more on the visitor/personal
quadrant. But when I am teaching, perhaps I have to transfer my self to the Resident/Professional
quadrant so that I keep track of everything to do with the course more effectively.
So, then the question is how can I be professional without being too personal?
It is natural that your personal self will come into
play when dealing with online teaching. of course with experience, one could
minimise this. However, in the context of online teaching, I think it would be
nice to have a separate online teaching platform where you could interact with
students in a professional manner. Like the ONL platform we have. Then the
chance of revealing your personal side is limited since you are constantly
aware of the nature of the platform. One also could make a short presentation
about yourself and present it to the student so that they could get a feeling
about your personality. This could be done in a fun way (like we did in ONL) so
that you break the ice at the beginning of the course you're teaching. You
could even use your personal experience to make this happen in a smoother way. Then students
would be more comfortable with you. When it comes to these online platforms,
one thing could be that the user interface of these platforms could be designed
similar to a popular platform like Facebook or LinkedIn or maybe online gaming
platforms. then the learning curve for using the platform will be faster.
The traditional way of teacher teaching and students
listen in a classroom might not be the best option in the online teaching
world. Tools like Zoom and teams will help us to overcome the physical distance
issue in distance learning, but activities should be designed to engage
students in a way that they work together, again, like what we are doing now in
ONL. We were put into solving our own issue (a scenario in here)
rather than the teacher giving the solution directly. This way objectives of the
flipped classroom approach could be achieved. Then the important thing is that
there should be digital tools that help to achieve group work more
collaboratively.
Dear Chamara, Thank you for sharing your views. I am interested in the ways societies different of our Finnish welfare society deal with online learning. From your text I get the impression that 1. there is uncertainty concerning the difference between remote learning and conduct teaching; 2. there is a certainty that professional conduct requires teachers to preserve their privacy; and finally, 3) roles are to remain unchallenged as teachers are teachers and students are students. Am I right? Please, don't read between the lines. I am just trying to understand not judge. I am trying to comprehend how different societies may actually require completely different learning environments, physical and virtual? And how is this the case if we agree that we all just want to be happy and be loved? Is the need to perpetuate our social status quo(s) more important than learn, be happy, and be loved? Why then should learning environments be so socio-culturally bound? Again, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHi Chamara, thanks for your thoughts. About the personal experience you bring in, I honestly think that this is a key factor why teachers can't be replaced by AI in education. While EdX and coursera are driven by LA and AI there is no interaction, or when it is, then it is programmed. It's quizzes or forum entries that maybe one other person reads and feedbacks, if ever. But educators: they are human, not perfect. As educators we react in certain ways others don't. It is also a something students learn from: Different approaches to topics, different ways to communicate, different ways to handle a situation. Don't get me wrong, I am not against online learning at all, but we really need that human factor in it. We need teachers who are who they are: personal, approachable, not perfect :-D.
ReplyDeleteHi Chamara. I'm generally curious about the "flipped classroom" idea. The way groupwork is organized in ONL211 for project based learning has both advantages and shortcomings, though. Advantage is that we as students are in charge and responsible for definition of our scope, scheduling and output. That's great. I think the disadvantage is that the learning outcomes are not defined clearly. This causes unnecessary confusion and some amount of "wasted" energy in my experience.
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