The End of a Roller Coaster Ride

ONL course was definitely a roller coaster ride for me. I was too scared to get in, but at the same time I had the dire need to get in, too. Then I was too excited and waiting until the ride started. The first round was so exciting and bit confusing, and I was also nervous because I was too new to this experience. Then I managed to enjoy the ride and it was a mixture of adventure, excitement and also anxiety. Then came the end of the ride and it was so soon. I still have that excitement and the joy that I was able to experience this adventure. Of course, I do not want to put an end to this, so the memories will be cherished forever. And our team didn’t want to end that excitement either, we promised to meet every month to break the monotony of life; to talk, to think, to reflect, and to have fun together.

It was a combination of both knowledge and fun. I learnt many things from ONL course. I had never heard of Coggle, but I learnt how to use it here, and we even used it for our team work. And I learnt about Padlet and I even used it in my classes and my students loved it. I even encouraged my students to write blogs and now I am thinking of designing assignments related to blog posts.

It is a known fact that with the rapid development of technology, the term “classroom” may soon be obsolete, and today, Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has become reasonably promising because of its interactive, social nature (Leow, 2015; Satar & Ozdener, 2008). Electronic discussions also make room for equal participation (Warschauer, 1996). This is why I wanted to join ONL. I wanted to be exposed to the new developments which have taken place inside the classroom.

I had three individual goals. One is to improve my knowledge in digital tools, for my PhD study is about the role of computer mediated corrective feedback on language performance. So, I wanted to explore more on the digital tools that can be used in computer mediated communication. And the second goal was to complete this course to earn a qualification, again a requirement of my PhD programme: to earn credits by completing relevant courses. The third goal was to expand my knowledge on computer mediated learning (as I mentioned earlier) because I agree with what Leow syas: the traditional classroom will soon be obsolete. Our students are techier these days and they are so interested in learning new things. So I believe, if we could use this new technology when teaching, they will be more engaged in the learning process, thus the teaching/learning process will be more effective.

At the end of journey, I believe I could achieve all these goals, and I could earn an extra credit as well: I met my colleagues from various parts of the world who are very open minded. I love the discussions we had so far and look forward to meeting them again.

So, thank you our facilitators, Kiru and Lina for your attempt to make all the discussions effective and enjoyable; and thank you all my teammates for making the past few months so exciting and fun.

Finally, thank you ONL team for creating a remarkable platform for all of us to share knowledge, opinions, reflections and fun!

References

Leow, R. P. (2015). The changing L2 classroom, and where do we go from here? Explicit Learning in The L2 classroom (pp. 270-278). New York: Routledge.

Satar H. M.  & Ozdener N. (2008). The Effects of Synchronous CMC on Speaking Proficiency and Anxiety: Text versus VoiceChat. The Modern Language Journal, 92(4), 595-613. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/25173104?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13(2), 7-26.