In the second week of March we started exploring our online participation & digital literacies. This seemed an easy starter. Everybody was supposed to share our experiences in relation to our:
online participation
digital footprints
digital presence
digital identity
We also analyzed our:
(digital) consumption,
communication,
collaboration
creation
After watching David's White's videos and webinar on his typology for online engagement we drew our own maps and discussed them in our PBL team. It was an interesting activity that showed us similarities and differences in our interpretation of the Visitors and Residents Model. We reflected on why some of us are more active in the personal/private domain of Internet platform use and others feel more at ease in the professional domain. We analyzed our needs and motivations and the ways to move forward - how to occupy other areas that might be useful in our careers.
It turned our that various HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) allow or ban certain platforms, encourage us to record our lectures or discourage any use of recorded content. We had interesting discussions on the role of the teacher in the online environment and the value of transmissive versus transformative forms of education. When you meet people from various cultures and background concepts that seemed obvious to you only yesterday are no longer so obvious, and you start asking yourself basic questions:
Why do I teach this way?
What kind of a teacher am I?
Do I engage my students in collaboration frequently enough?
Do I offer them flipped classroom activities?
Does my teaching focus on the student?
"Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time." - Hebrew Proverb
The ONL model: Focus, Investigate and Share
Our PBL group is a perfect place to ask questions. You can never expect a single answer. There are many points of views represented in the group, as they are filtered by many individual histories and unique teaching experiences. You will always get a chance to see a given problem through the eyes of others. And the best part comes at the end of the sessions: sharing. We share our thoughts but we also offer links to useful articles, tutorials or videos. And thus our knowledge is growing faster than we thought!
Perseverance
Doing an open course like the ONL one is not always easy. You must dedicate yourself to it, find the time and pleasure in working with others. There are no gurus, no know-it-all leaders. You are working with colleagues from other unis with the help of facilitators but nobody will tell you where to go and what to achieve. There are no quick fixes and easy answers. Some people do not like this open, flexible approach and give up when they encounter the first obstacles. They would like to get ready-made solutions like the fast-food dishes you are served in drive-throughs.
It was sad to see two colleagues leave our team (of eight participants and two facilitators) just after three weeks of working together. We had been asked to collaboratively present the results of our week's work in a multimodal document produced with a new tool, like Prezi, Slack or Padlet, etc. Clearly it was not equally appealing to all of us. Some group members quit, others got so involved that they did most of the work instantaneously, almost without thinking. Still others joined later, contributed a little in order not to spoil the work done earlier by others. ONL is learning by doing. You will not master new skills just by watching.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ― Aristotle
You can admire our first piece of collaborative work on online participation & digital literacies.