Last post for ONL171...!

I am really late with this...! But here it is, my last blog post for the course ONL171. For those of you thinking it sounds like a nice course you can already now register for ONL172!

ONL171 has been a real eye opener. It has showed me how big the field of online learning is and, unfortunately, that many of us are behind and because of this missing out on opportunities for both ourself as teacher and for our students. This is also one of the most important understandings from this course, this is happening now and many of us are behind and even at universities as KI there is not a unified plan for how to teach teachers and students in digital literacy.

What I have learned during ONL171 will have a great impact on my teaching activities. Over time I will introduce other ways for my students to do activities online and, maybe most important, to stay connected online! This part about being connected although working online and that it is possible is something that will have a great impact on my course designs in the future.

Technology is not by itself a solution, but together with people it can give us possibilities for flexible learning and change the way we think about teaching. But to do this we need to master the technology so that it is a natural environment for us to be in. Technology should be something we know and the time should be spent using technology to learn more about our subject, not fighting with the online tools. For this to happen we need to increase digital literacy in both teachers and students. We also need to stop being afraid for changes in software tools and understand that from now there will not be just one online tool working exactly like this for years. Instead, we will use different tools and they will change over the years, and, that is not a problem because we are digital literate!

At KI this is a big issue at the moment since we are changing LMS from pingpong to Canvas. There are many concerns about how to handle learning a new LMS for teachers and that it might be so difficult for students to learn more than one LMS and so on. This is a typical sign of the fact that we are not digitial literate, if we were changing LMS would not rise these concerns. My own reflections on this is that the only problem is that we need to archive what we have on pingpong in forms of grades and fulfilment of assignments. But making courses in a new LMS or students having to learn two LMS, no that is not the problem, we/they should be equipped for that.

So I think the main question after this course for me is; "How do teachers and students become digital literate so that we stop being afraid of online tools and their changes?". I don't have a conclusive answer to this issue of course, except that we have to train our teachers at universities (and other schools) in a coordinated fashion and we have to include digital literacy into all syllabus and tell our teachers and students that being digital literate is as obvious as speaking English.