Amanda ONL blog

Some 12 weeks ago the ONL course started, and the first topic was about digital literacies. I reflected on that by putting together a graph over my own digital literacies – strengths and short-comings. Now it is time to revisit that graph and see what has happened during these weeks. I thought by doing this I would have seen a marvelous development and increased skills, but it turns out it is quite the same or less than before. Why? Have I failed? Of course one have to consider that this is a subjective self-evaluation, still, why do I think that I know less,   and have fewer skills now than before? The draw-backs are seen in communication and collaboration (i.e. participating in digital networks for learning and research), career and identity management (promoting myself in digital media) and ICT literacy (i.e.to adopt, adapt and use digital tools and applications). Well, I think it is the classic case of ‘the more you learn the less you know’. You come to realize ...

Designing a course is not only about creating realistic course goals and matching learning activities to those. A major part is to attract and maintain the students’ interest. There has to be something thrilling that awakens their curiosity, a bit like the Angler-fish who lurks with his light in the great depths of sea.  Excitement and curiosity are emotions that push us forward, make us explore uncharted waters, and the consideration of emotions could be useful in course designing. Research has shown that emotions affect learning through mediation of memory, attention, decision-making, motivation, self-regulation, social interaction, higher-order thinking and creativity (Park & Lim, 2019). It seems that if we could promote certain emotions, we could facilitate student engagement and learning. Özhan and Kocadere (2020) describe that positive emotions such as excitement, happiness or joy in students indicate that they are more engaged and social interactive, which in turn...