LESSONS LEARNT FROM ONL202

Since the beginning of the ONL202, I have been quite amused with the content of the online course. It is not really heavy material to work with, however if you are not an educationist (or educationalist – I don’t know which one is a better term), at the beginning you might be a little overwhelmed.

At first, lectures “digital literacy” and “open network-sharing and openness” were not really hard to catch.  

I learnt a lot from digital literacy session , was I really digitally literate? Was I a second generation? Or was I native? I consider myself as “a native” of digital world. Later, we discussed about that the knowledge should be shared and should be accessed by everyone but what are the limitations and borders? This was very interesting topic and the answers differ a lot based on where you live.

The third session was about the learning in communities. This was an interesting one for me because I learnt a lot from my digital communities especially on facebook and linkedin, sometimes from twitter. I never thought about those platforms as an open learning sources, but they are for me! I follow many scientific journals and I get the punchlines and latest scientific news from those journals’ newsfeeds. Now, I know they are my learning platforms! Cool!

Latest session was about blended learning which was soooo difficult to grasp at the beginning because of the pedagogical terminologies. If you have never come across those terminologies before and I think it is difficult to understand.  I think, for later course design, it would be better to  define those terminologies on the website in glossary or something. Or maybe for each session, terminology can be outlined at first. Because I am not a native speaker, and I have been with many people with different cultural background, and sometimes I just was not sure whether it was an expression of the course designer? Or was it a terminology? Sometimes different words are used in English in different cultures and in different areas. For instance: in Boston plastic shopping bags are called as just plastic bag, but in Lincoln it is called as sac. I learnt the “subway” as an “underground” however it is purely British. When I moved to Boston, I asked people where the underground is people looked at me weirdly. I am pretty sure they thought that I was a drug addict 😀 Anyhow, I hope I could explain myself here.

Even though I got pretty dizzy during the coursework I learnt a lot and I really enjoyed my group friends, we had a really nice PBL group and I am going to miss them.

Hope to meet you somewhere someday somehow

Cheers everyone

xoxo

BLENDED LEARNING

Topic 4 (Blended Learning) was the hardest topic for me to grasp.  I think from the science teaching perspective view, it was challenging for me to think outside of the box.  At first I thought about what is “blended learning” …What are we trying to catch from this topic.  What blends into what….I had a difficult time to understand at the beginning. Are we investigating the the online vs face-to-face? Is that why it is called blended learning?  Or it is named as blended learning because in teaching “different presence types are blended?” …I think , although I am not rally sure, all of those considered as blended learning. 

I learned from Dr. Cleveland-Innes talk that different presences are important which I never thought about.  I think during my teaching I had been using my inner judgement as a guide which is actually my emotional presence. 

Of course pandemic changed everything. Online meetings classes all are inevitable and it is hard to keep people engaged whole time. That is why a change has to happen in course design.

During our team work, we worked on a mind map which shows different opinions about social presence, teaching presence, emotional presence, cognitive presence. I think I now have an idea about blended learning. 

Personalized Network Learning (PNL) and Collaborative Learning

Personalized Network Learning is a way of informal learning from each other.  From the ONL class Kay Oddone  explains the features of PLN in these two youtube videos below in the references.  There are multiple layers of PLN, it does not have to be on social platforms (such as linkedin, facebook, twitter, etc) , it could be also via personal interactions.

Is it personal because you turn to your network to gain/achieve the knowledge. In my field, in science, it is very common to learn from each other or from our network. For instance, during our masters or PhD we learn from our senior colleagues in the same lab who are more experienced. That’s how it works in myfield, seniors train juniors in the laboratory.  It is beneficial for the juniors and also it is beneficial for the laboratory. In this way of learning and looking over the juniors’ shoulders, laboratory saves consumables, minimizes the mistakes and save resources (such as expensive chemicals)…

On the other hand collaborative learning is also very common in my field. We have to collaborate in order to do research, and we learn and answer the question as a team with other colleagues. We cannot know everything in our field, and it is inevitable to collaborate. It is also true for science students. They have to learn to collaborate very early, through science projects etc… The problem is sometimes some students are overactive, some students do not involve as they should be. If their roles are established from the beginning, responsibilities of the collaboration might be clear for the students.

In the summary we are living in a very interesting time of the history, digital revolution. I think the terms Personalized Network Learning (PLN) and Collaborative Learning will be redefined in the future after digital revolution.

References:

KNOWLEDGE SHOULD BE SHARED

We are in the era of open learning. I think it all started with big universities. As far as I recall, first Harvard university protested the amount of money they had to pay for journals in their library. Their idea was that academicians and universities are the ones producing the data for scientific journals, yet they had to pay to read those articles. Later, Harvard university refused to pay and pushed academicians to publish in open access journals. I think the open network learning that’s how it started. Later on big universities started publishing their courses online for free on their websites, as the idea was that the knowledge had to be shared and should be free (if you just want to learn, and not look for a degree or certificate). Later, those universities pooled their online courses together, I think the first one was Edx. MOOCs then started to develop and became what it is today.

Once the pandemic sparked, I think the importance of MOOCs and online learning reminded once again.

As a scientist, I can assure you that this is not the first but not the least epidemic the humanity went through and will go through. Since science is unable to find new antibiotics; viruses and bacteria will return, because they evolve faster than humanity. Thus, open learning era has to continue for education purpose and for scientific purpose. We have to share the knowledge.

For instance, there is an enormous effort in science to develop a cure and scientists keep sharing what they discovered about the virus and the disease. Community gains knowledge together. Entire world is open for data sharing about the pandemic. I think it is a great example of open learning. We learn together as a community.

I know as open learning we meant MOOCs and classroom materials, however I am a scientist and my open learning materials are those science data shared freely & openly.