Final reflection

Personal impression
I started this course with strong preconceptions. I had them not about the course but about elearning. I do understand that elearning is here to stay, but I still prefer face-to-face learning. Since elearning is so young then perhaps we have not found the right way how to do it: theoretical concepts are arising and practical experiences as well. After 5 years the world (concepts) of elearning are bit different.
I also do realise that the facilitator/professor is no longer the only source of the truth, but I still miss classroom discussions (IRL), somehow it seems to me that synergy is better there. You can argue and you hear answers straight away. In elearning everything takes place in some time period. If not msn/or skype (but skype is not so easy to use yet, the quality of connection is not
stable) then there is always some time between arguments. Sometimes it is good (if arguments are angry), but to me it kills the synergy.
It seems to me that to have an excellent online project together is a huge challenge. This kind of projects will be more successful when participants have met each other or are the same level (possess similar knowledge). If not, then there will be some frustration among participants.

What else did I learn?

First some practical note: communication between representatives of different cultures can be problematic. Not everything is understood the way you think. This is for sure. After one episode I tried to be more careful while writing my posts. The result of that was perhaps my statements were not so strong as they should have been. But in this i am not sure.

The patterns of behaviours are different. It was interesting to see how different people behave. As learning in formal educational system to me always has something to do with the power, it was interesting to see how representatives of different cultures deal with it. It would be interesting to analyse these patterns.

How hard it is to come out with common understand about something. For example: I proposed several times to use in our course design term "football" and not soccer and did put also some links what did support my proposal (to me FIFA is a strong argument). Still we had no common understanding and used football and soccer at the same time. Create common understand before you act? Or act anyway? In my opinion common understanding is very important and this can be created only with cooperation (this was the reason why I tried to comment other work in our wikispaces as much as I could).

It is hard to motivate somebody if you can't have a personal contact: emails are easy to miss. (so have telephone number and an address!). About motivation I did write several times. To me intrinsic motivation is very thin and it depends on several other aspects than just a will of humans. It does not mean that it does not exist, but during learning process intrinsic motivation is easy to die. If learner will have the feeling of failing then intrinsic motivation gets damaged and does not drive anymore.

Don’t cover the facts. I think that the students of this course should have known before that some students will join later. It would have helped to avoid the feeling of loneliness in the group.

If some members of the project-group do know each other and live/work together - it is easier for them to cooperate with each other than with members of the group with whom they have not met. If one school has several students participating in this course the learning outcome might be better because they have a chance to discuss things/subjects with each other.

In online course always accommodate students with good channels for discussion. Even if some students don’t understand the subject it is possible for them to observe the discussion and still have a better understanding about the subject. I'm not sure if everybody did get what is course design all about.

If you want to have an excellent project and communication - first you must have some plan and structure. Otherwise you will loose a lot of time while scratching and gain nothing.

What else? I thought a lot about self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation. The problem with them is that even though I like the concepts I have never seen this working out in formal course at university level. My presumption is that the preconditions for self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation are not preformed.

I did learn something about football :). The idea that football could be the subject of our course was great (so we have to thank Oleg) and now it seems to me that everything can be taught in online / elearning way. Wow, this is something! So there is a huge plus to elearning / online courses side 

As learning process is a development process then learners want frequent feedback (especially if they are not having weekly classroom meeting): am I considering every (most) aspects of this phenomena? Is my argumentation logical? In formal educational system were there are some home assignments: how are my assignments done?

Taking responsibility for your own learning.

Well …
I think I did take the responsibility for my own learning. In my opinion learning materials were great and they raised several new ideas. I tried to reflect the practise (incl this course) and the feelings/thoughts/ideas I had during this learning process. Actually this was a first experience to me to formalise (write down) my thoughts and comments. This gives a good overview when and what I learned.
At one point I thought about self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation as how far these concepts are from real life. Now I think that perhaps the preconditions of these things are misunderstood.
If we are taking a look to our students in this course, it can not be that only some 20% of students take a full responsibility of their learning. (Around 25% did finally the tasks required to complete this course). To me there is a conflict between theory and practise.

About feedback - If I would have to decide now again whether to join this course, then I would think hard and probably would not join.
I wrote into several posts my feedback: materials great, course too intensive, more feedback and support from the facilitators is needed, next time try to use the forum also and discuss there interesting subjects (not formal information about the course) and add some pictures or jokes about elearning :) (have some fun); clarify your target group, be in dialogue with students (and make sure that the learning takes place - that people learn 'right' things). Elearning is more demanding and that includes facilitators also. If you want students to take the responsibility of their learning than you must take it (responsibility) also. Analyse this course: what worked out and what did not. I don't know whether there are some quality measures, but to me it seems that if from the group of 8 only 3 graduates, then this is not a success story. Sry. Try to get some information (data) when and why people decided to leave this course. Read reflections and try to understand why do people have negative feelings about this course (last reflections of participants describe having negative feelings about this course and I share their feelings, the conflict I had/described several weeks ago is still there). If necessery collect data about it. Analyse your pedagogical approach: I'm not sure that everything was ok there. Give students more freedom: some elective material, alternative assignments (wikis, more than 1 possible headings for essay per week). Have plan B for the course.

So, this was the last post. Dear reader, have a wonderful summer and take care!