I teach online a lot. In fact, I am teaching online now- a non majors general biology lab course. Students do some hands-on labs at home, and they also complete virtual lab experiments and simulations, watch videos, write lab reports, and post and comment on discussion boards. So being at the same time a student in the ONL191 course is quite interesting.
There are students who reach out a week before class starts with concerns or questions. There are those who never email or say anything on the live sessions. Some will write long and detailed emails. Others prefer to text (I have a google number for this). Once in a while there will be a student who wants to talk or have a face to face online meeting. Just yesterday I had an online meeting with a student who is on a Navy ship somewhere far away to clarify a technical issue. It was strange and at the same time touching to connect in spite of the distance.
So I am looking at myself now, starting the ONL191 course. How do I behave? I am eager and also a bit worried. It is ok now, but come April, I will be attending a conference and traveling. So I want to do as much as possible now that I still have some bandwidth. My main focus will be problem-based learning (PBL).
Although I did my doctoral studies in Linkoping University, I never practiced PBL. By the time I spoke enough Swedish to teach, my time was almost over. So one of the aspects that really interests me in the course is getting more acquainted with it. Here in the USA I have met PBL people- they tend to be more in medical and dental schools.
The ONL191 course has plenty of references listed, and I have downloaded a few of them already, but first thing I do is try to connect with existing knowledge. This is, in fact, the third step in Gagne’s 9 events of instruction: Stimulate previous knowledge.
Went into my Mendeley library folder of teaching articles, and searched for PBL. Few articles popped up, one of them a review I have used before, D’Avanzo’s article on changes in biology education since the publication of the groundbreaking Vision and Change report in 2011. The article gives a nice introductions to PBL, and the points to a network to coordinate the case study and PBL networks for biology. The website, however, seems quite inactive since 2012, so I do not know what happened there.
And this is it for tonight. More PBL reading coming tomorrow, this time more updated!
References
- D’Avanzo, C. (2013). Post-vision and change: do we know how to change? CBE Life Sciences Education, 12(3), 373–82.
- Gagne, R. (1985). The Conditions of Learning (4th Ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
barralopolis 
Mar 05, 2019 @ 03:57:09
The 9 events of instruction was new to me, thank you for sharing this!
Mar 10, 2019 @ 10:53:03
Hi Ana Marie
It is wonderful to read of your shift in perspective from that of online facilitator to online student yourself. Having experienced that same shift myself some time ago, I have developed a renewed respect for the needs of students that I have the privilege of supporting online. While PBL informs the pedagogic design of the ONL course, it is the community of inquiry(COI) that develops that is often the most interesting as it reflects the learning that takes place for a group through the educational experience that occurs at the intersection of social, cognitive, teaching and emotional presences. We will explore this in more detail under topic 4.
I look forward to reading more of your reflections as the course progresses.
Mar 12, 2019 @ 06:14:36
You seem to be quite familiar with the online teaching already. So was I when I started my ONL journey, but still you are going to find many new aspects you haven’t thought about. Nice to have you onboard!
Mar 17, 2019 @ 13:47:26
Hi
Thanks for your thoughts. Actually you are one of the people I am refering to in my text when I discuss about the different backgrounds we have and that some of us (not me…) is already doing ONL. Hope to get a lot of ideas and thoughts from you during the course.