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Lessons learnt - future practice

Lessons learnt – future practice It feels ages ago that I started this ONL172 course on 25 th of September.  We all felt very confused in the beginning.  I started wondering in the first week if I would make it through the 10 weeks.  One of the most important things that I learnt through the course was probably to work together as a team.  I normally prefer to do work on my own, but we were divided into groups and had to work as a team.  I suddenly realised the value of teamwork.  Our hourly meetings were a brainstorming session from beginning to end.  We were from different backgrounds and our ideas inspired each other.  We had different people being the inspiration for meetings.  We made turns to lead the meetings. It was nice that it was not the same people who lead the sessions.  It helped to keep the energy levels up in the group. I encountered different tools that I can use in my teaching.  I will most definitely use these tools in my lecturing.  Up to now I only us
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Design for online and blended learning

Design for online and blended learning My participation with the ONL course made me reflect on my own lecturing style.  My modules are all face to face tuition.  How can I develop my modules to incorporate an online learning side to it? Most of the modules at my institute of higher learning have a 10% digital component to it.  Unfortunately, most of my courses don’t have a digital component to it, it is still in the development phase.  Nothing is stopping me in the meantime to add a digital aspect to it. I can add a tool like Wikispaces to it to get the students involved with the module outside of their contact tuition time.  The Wikispaces page will be for each of my modules that have no digital component to it.  We do a continuous assessment during the module.  My plan is to do the continuous assessment on a digital platform.  I also want to get the students active in blogging to share ideas regarding different lesson units.  The process of blogging will hopefully stimul
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Technology and collaborative learning

Technology and collaborative learning Topic 3 of the ONL172 course got me thinking about cooperation, collaboration and teamwork.  We, as South African lecturers and teachers, are constantly reminded of the benefits of group work.  We use it in our teaching, but it mostly happens with lots of students who complain about it.  If we must be honest to ourselves, we all hate group work.  We always have the situation of one person who is not doing their part of the work.  How can this be solved?  Can technology help? During our group discussions for ONL172 we realised that there is a huge amount of technology, in the form of apps, that can enhance collaborative learning and still give the individual a chance to be recognised for their part in the collaboration.  Wikispaces ( www.wikispaces.com ) is one of the wonderful tools that can be used.  I particularly liked the tracking system of the app.  It gives the facilitator the opportunity to track individual students while they’re co
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Openness and lecturing

All lecturers walk into a class setup with the same purpose: we want to convey information and a way of taught to our students.  This way of taught doesn’t necessary means that we want all the students to copy or mimic our ideas.  We want our students to be able to think academically and be able to defend their ideas on an academic level. Our focus during lecturing is the transfer of knowledge.  This process of transferring knowledge enables the student to become a possible master in his/her field.  To transfer knowledge, we need a tool.  PowerPoint could be such a tool.  While compiling PowerPoint slides, we don’t necessary think of ownership, we focus on the transfer of knowledge.  Some of us don’t even know who owns our PowerPoint slides.  It was interesting to see the different responses in our PBL group when we started talking about ownership.  For some academics it was strange to hear that I don’t have ownership of my PowerPoint slides.  My academic institution reserves th
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Digital literacies - Can we adapt to a changing world?

Digital literacies – Can we adapt to a changing world? Many of us grew up using the old version of pen and paper.  Everything was paper based, from company financial statements to lecturing notes and textbooks.  Eventually everything changed to an electronic version.  We had to start adapting to digital literacies.  The question we are faced with now, is if we are ready for everything being digital.  For us that is in a lecturing position, we must keep up with the students needs.  Our students, mostly born just before the new millennium, are digitally inclined and not used to the old paper and pen method.  We therefore had to adapt our teaching methods, to keep our students interested. Gone are the days of a lecturer standing in front of a class and lecturing.  You can’t just use the “chalk and talk” method anymore.  You are now an actor who must entertain your students.  They don’t seem to be able to gain their knowledge from the old methods.  We have technology to our exposu
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Good morning! Let me start by introducing myself.  I'm Sanet du Plessis, a lecturer at Varsity College in Durban, South Africa.  I'm lecturing Afrikaans to education students.  Afrikaans is the youngest language in South Africa. I've decided to do the online learning course ONL172 to better my knowledge of incorporating the digital space in education.  I feel it as a field where much can be done. Scared, nervous, excited, not knowing what's waiting for me.... Yes, that is all the emotions that are currently running through my head!  Hopefully I'll survived this course and come out at the other end with more knowledge and self-confidence when it comes to the digital world. ONL172... Let's do it!
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