Module 1 – Critical Skills
Online Learning
One challenge of online learning is that we (both instructor and students) might mistakenly believe that an online course is easier or can be done ‘on the side’ on top of all our usual obligations, pleasures, and challenges. These may include paid work, family and other care responsibilities, activist and volunteer commitments, vacation plans, hobbies, etc. Most of us have rather full lives with multiple demands competing for our time and energy.
Another challenge is that online learning can be really lonely. There are no classmates to meet, no real-time discussions; no class attendance to structure our time use. Related to that, moving from passively consuming or ‘ingesting’ course materials to active learning and gaining new insights can be more challenging in an online environment.
In this course, we proceed from an understanding that learning is not or certainly not only ingesting and mastering information. Instead, in this course, we are interested in critical and analytical thinking and developing new insights together with skills critical to the research process.
One challenge we thus have to tackle in this course together is to collectively build a learning environment that encourages active and engaged learning in an online community.
For that, you must make time in your schedule to do the work for this course in a timely fashion. Think of the material here on the webpage as your class time. You should plan on 3 hours for working through each module, which is as much time as you would spend in class. Add to that sufficient time to complete readings and learning activities plus time for assignments.
If you are taking this course in the spring or summer term, remember that this course runs at twice the speed compared to the fall/winter term, meaning you need to schedule twice as much time in your calendar.
Watch
(Running time 15:51 minutes)
Nirupama Rajan, a graduate of the MA Gender and Social Justice Studies program at the UofA, shares effective strategies for online learning.
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA WGS 498/GSJ 598 