Willkommen auf nicoleengelhardt.de

After a rest of one week based on a time lack I am back again. Unfortunately so I missed the discussion about evaluation and assessment - for me an important and exciting topic - but I will try to catch up the readings and discussions in the next days.

The topic for this week is reflection. As activities we got the following questions to answer: "How has your understanding of PLE/Ns changed throughout this course? What role can they play in your teaching and learning? What new practices are you considering undertaking?" Therefore I'd like to take these questions to note some of my thoughts and learnings.

Requirements for an effective participation:

1. Time: Even though I have not so much time for this MOOC as I'd like to have I try to engage me by reading some of the proposed articles, reading and sometimes posting in the discussion forums and blogging once a week. I think this is participation on a very low level but at least active. So it needs a lot of time for an effective participation on a MOOC.
2. Self-management: I agree with Sara Genone who took the following requirements on her list: strong motivation, critical thinking, self-evaluation, self-orientation & self-regulation. For not getting lost learners need a (very) high self motivation. On the other side learners are supposedly intrinsic motivated because they are interessted in the learning topic respectively they can choose their learning contents. However it is not easy to take the right choice and to get an overview about all the contents and discussions. Furthermore it is hard to find the people who are discussing the same topics and to get into contact with them. So it is necessary to set your own goals and objectives and then to go your own way by looking for interessting content and participants. Also the facilitators pick up materials and give instructions the learning is very selfdetermined.
3. Connection: I assume I am still learning in my PLE - not in a PLN. Maybe it's based on the lack of time I have for this MOOC, maybe my difficulties are based in the foreign language which makes it even harder to discuss (and therefore to get into contact with other learners) - I don't know. But it's easy for me to use all the (social networking) tools for learning - I believe that became really normal for me in the last years. They facilitate to get into contact with other learners - unfortunately there is still another barrier for me as I described above.

Conclusion

In my opinium my self management is high to very high so I am not worried about getting lost in this course. But I also notice that it is hard to follow the course week to week, to read just some of the proposed articles, to pick up some of the discussions and blogposts of the other participants and to be at least an active course member by posting a blogpost or commenting in the discussion forums. I am just thinking about adapting this model in formal courses at the university but I am not sure if (the majority of the) students will have the necessary skills (literacies?). I assume this is my biggest understanding until now: Learners need very high self management skills and constant support to achieve their learning goals. And therefore they have to develope the corresponding skills.