Topic 5: End of a journey


The ONL course is almost over. What a journey!
I learned many things through my engagement in this course. First of all, I experienced how it is to learn through sharing experiences, concepts and ideas and through building your own experiences together with other people in an online group. I learned that collaboration with other people is possible and can be very successful even though we have never met physically! I had the great opportunity to be in a group with members of different backgrounds with rich and interesting educational experiences and views. In each topic in this course, each member contributed meaningfully to the group not only in terms of content but also by transferring and sharing their experiences and their ideas; they opened up! Moreover, I learned how to formulate and communicate new ideas in a more direct and visual approach, by getting to know new digital tools to me thanks to the fruitful inputs and brainstorming of our group. During this course, very interesting and brave projects were made such as a pictochart, a mindmap, a podcast and narrative videos.  
In the course, we learned about many topics: digital literacies, openness, collaborative learning in networked communities and blending learning.  My educational practice from now on will not be the same. I feel that I have learned to be a better teacher, I got engaged with new concepts and I deepened the level of my knowledge with concepts I already was acquaintant with. Now I know that there are many possibilities to improve my courses, I can make them more relevant and attractive to the students and promote collaborative learning in an intrinsic way. I believe that technology has a central role in teaching nowadays, especially in technical, engineering and natural sciences. To this end, students need to get familiar with different tools and be able to learn in a deep way using technology.
In the future, I am planning to implement blended learning to my courses in a more systematic way and I will try to open them up as much as possible! To this end, I would like to design the courses in a way that so computer-aided learning can play a more important role in the teaching and learning activities  in a meaningful and interesting way. For courses, such as chemistry or biology, I would like to try to set up virtual experiences for the students, for instance a virtual lab where they can play around and try different experimental set ups and be allowed to make mistakes in a controlled and safe environment. These experiences would be complementary to the actual lab sessions and would serve as a support for the students to be able experiment and explore a scientific situation using their knowledge and curiosity.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 9, 2020 at 12:43 AM

    Thanks for sharing that your group embarked on "very interesting and brave projects were made such as a pictochart, a mindmap, a podcast and narrative videos".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alastair CreelmanMay 10, 2020 at 10:52 AM

    Glad to hear that the course has been useful to you. Virtual labs are now quite common among many universities. If you search you'll find plenty and many of them are open to all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KarinMay 13, 2020 at 4:21 AM

    Such an inspiring last post Io! I will truly miss your posts to this blog (or are you perhaps planning to use it further on as a tool for reflection during your work as a researcher and teacher?). I came to think of some of the discussions we had during the campus meeting in the beginning of the course that concerned if there would be other people in this iteration on the ONL course that was connected to your field of chemical engineering. Did you find people with that background? Perhaps we can talk about that when we meet at the wrap-up meeting next week. All the best /Karin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Io AntonopoulouMay 14, 2020 at 1:32 AM

      Hi Karin! I am not sure if I would be able to keep up with blogging regarding my thoughts as a researcher and teacher. I tend to get shy since I have not a clear vision about the expectations and goals of my teaching yet. However, I am sure that I will be actively participating in discussions and actions within our organization as a first step. I was lucky that in my PBL group one member, Osman, comes from a more applied field (veterinary). I think that we could both communicate the possible difficulty in applying some of the discussed teaching strategies in our fields but we also realized that there are always things to improve in teaching and incorporate online active learning activities for teaching natural and applied sciences.

      Delete
  4. UnknownMay 21, 2020 at 9:35 AM

    Hiya, very inspirational sharing, especially on your ideas on integrating technologies in your future classes. You mentioned that "for courses, such as chemistry or biology, I would like to try to set up virtual experiences for the students, for instance a virtual lab where they can play around and try different experimental set ups and be allowed to make mistakes in a controlled and safe environment." I think this is exciting and I would see how I would benefit from such course if I were in it. I would like to share also what we have discussed in group PBL 11. It is one way to integrate technologies to create "online" learning. It is also important to make this learning 'collaborative' in such ways that students need to work with one another and build upon each other's knowledge in this connected online setting. All best! :- ) Elmie

    ReplyDelete
  5. HealthyJuly 11, 2020 at 7:34 AM

    nice and an very facinating post to check out on this nice site! Never write any input only now just could not resist .. https://www.weparty.tv

    ReplyDelete

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