Why bother?

When I mentioned it to my colleagues that I joined an online course on open networked learning, some of them just stared at me, wondering why I volunteered to do this since my workplan is more than full for this academic year. Moreover, they said, you could just continue teaching the same way, without doing any fancy online stuff. Why bother? Face-to-face works best - their argument goes, and the basic functions in Moodle should satisfy the students' needs for online work. So really, why bother?


My reason is very simple: I want to equip my students with skills that are needed in working life. I want to show them a rich repertoire of practices, when it comes to online interaction and telecollaboration. It is not that I do not find face-to-face encounters important. I do find them essential. But, in my view, we as lecturers should offer a more colourful array of communicative resources for our students. By giving more, we do not need to take anything away.


Let the ONL181 challenge begin!