Welcome to #OLsuccess week! For the whole of this week – 4-10 July 2016 – our digital student blog is given over to online learners and what makes online learning a success for you.
We want to collect your experiences, ideas, thoughts and strategies for successful online learning. What you tell us will be used to create guidance for other online learners. We’ll produce some advice for the people who offer or support online learning, so they can help learners achieve their goals. You can follow progress on the blog with daily posts, questions and summaries.
How can I get involved?
Follow #OLsuccess on twitter for quick questions, daily updates, stories and links, or check our OLsuccess storify account for an overview of recent activity
Take our ten-minute survey about your experiences of learning online
Join the discussion and share your ideas on our #olsuccess discussion forum
Tell us your online learning story. Write a blog post, make a video or animation, record a sound file, take a picture or take part in this week’s task from the DS106 creative community – all about online learning. Post it on your chosen online forum. Don’t forget to use the #OLsuccess hashtag so we can find and storify it.
Check out this blog for daily updates, storify and more…
How do I know if I’m an online learner?
We think you’re an online learner if:
- you’re taking a course that is wholly or mainly online, e.g. a professional or academic qualification, a MOOC, an online course leading to a badge or certificate
- you’re taking a course in college or university that includes study time online, e.g. accessing e-books and e-journals, online activities, quizzes, videos, digital learning materials
- you’re learning online in any subject, but not as part of a formal course e.g. for interest, enjoyment, to gain skills, to meet a personal goal
What if I’m a teacher/facilitator/course leader for online learners?
If you’re any of these, or just interested in online learning as a researcher/developer/educator, we’d love to hear from you too.
We won’t ask you to complete the survey or answer questions that are meant for online learners . We want to keep their voices clear. (Of course you might be an online learner as well as a provider/teacher/facilitator – in which case you can take part with both hats on). We do invite you to share your thoughts with learners and other experts in our #olsuccess discussion forum and to take a look at our Successful Online Learners’ knowledge board to share your own findings (from research, development or experience) and relevant links.
We also invite you to consider how you could include #OLsuccess in your own online teaching. You could choose one of our questions and ask your learners to spend a little time responding to it, either through one of our own channels or in your course environment. You could then post us the results 🙂 Hopefully that will be a reflective activity for you and your learners, as well as something they can contribute to our shared understanding.
You could also consider asking learners to contribute a short digital story, perhaps as part of their course. Anything shared using the #OLsuccess hashtag is more or less certain of a response. The learner then has something they can include in an e-portfolio or learning blog, as well as contributing to the shared experience of #OLsuccess. There is a short brief and some ideas for toolstent here.
You might also be interested in this slideshare presentation about the emergent findings from our literature review.