In the beginning of May I was interviewed about my experiences from online teaching. And I thought that I might as well write a blog post about my experiences from moving online with my teaching.
As you might have noticed this semester the Covid19 situation made all university education move online, and so did my course called Complex IT systems in Large Organisations. This time it had around 45 students, and I teach it together with Diane Golay. My experiences from this was not entirely positive. We had a couple of days to plan the lectures, workshops and the process of the course. Here are my thoughts about the topic:
- I miss my students! You have very little contact with the students. And I miss them! I did not even see them! Teaching was like talking to a camera in a vacuum.
- How do you scaffold learning of open ended questions and complex problems without being able to really discuss with students. I did my best, but it was not at all easy. And I am quite sure that their learning was strongly affected.
- All interactions with students needed to be prepared in advance. Me and Diane prepared and used different collaborative tools for each lecture, and I think that they worked Ok, but I miss the spontaneity of face to face interaction.
- Most things are different in online teaching but some things are the same. Students still ask “Will this be on the exam” and I still get so frustrated. I want them to learn because they see the need to know more, not because it is on the exam. But i might be very naive.
Image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay