I was so excited that morning when I finally received the confirmation email stating that I had been selected to participate in this online course on Facilitating Online, being offered by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching of the University of Capetown, South Africa. I had previously received an email with the opening and applied for it. Due to my present little practical experience in facilitating online, I had known it would only take God to be accepted into the course – and yes it did take Him to do it!
Interest in the course.
Surely, I look forward greatly to this course; though I have an Engineering turned IT background, my interest and passion has increasingly been towards EdTech. I have taken a few MOOCs on the subject of teaching online and it has been very helpful for me. However, all previous courses have been with the United States context and sometimes you wonder if some of those things were practicable in our own peculiar setting in Africa. Therefore, I am particularly interested in taking this course because, this would provide an African context since most of us are Africans. Our higher-Ed may be slightly different from what obtains in the much more developed countries and learning in our context will provide its own peculiar challenges. I look forward to this interaction and great learning.
Secondly, MOOCs due to their large number of participants have a way of swallowing you and even though there is learning, it may not be as personal and engaging as a class should be. This particular course will afford me the opportunity to have those experiences of both, learning in an online course and then learning to facilitate in an online environment, with a small number.
My journey through 8 weeks
The course requires that we keep a private journal that will be useful for reflections. The environment has a ‘Blog’ platform but I also decided to blog here as well to reflect, share my experience and also receive insights from others too. I will try to blog weekly about my experience and the issues of reflection, pertaining to facilitating online.
I look forward to learning a lot from all the participants in the course, they all come from diverse backgrounds and that is critical for the course. Come with me as we journey through the next eight weeks!