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Learning Online 2025

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I’m undertaking a formal course with Swim England over the next year. Similar to the OU, there will be three 'Residentials' throughout the year where we all gather—the fifty or so participants on the course. Otherwise, it follows everything I have come to expect over the years: live online sessions, a ‘hub' for content uploads, and using the Google Classroom platform. Appraisals will be face-to-face, naturally, and a mentor will be assigned from the beginning. 

I’m here because 'reflection’ is considered necessary, and after all, the purpose of this platform was to reflect in public to get feedback from fellow travellers. I’ll follow an Open Learn course on Sports Science in tandem. 

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Design Museum

Learning Online!

Visible to anyone in the world

Here's something rare? Something about e-learning, or learning online, or simply 'doing a course online'.

A slide from a presentation by Hollie Fields on 'How to teach diving'

I have done two of them recently, both for Swim England, both a speaker online with a set of slides, Zoom and break out rooms. No assessment included at all, so I could just as easily had the camera off and watched telly. 

Both were show and tell slide presentations, one better than the other, both perfectly informative. I didn't have to take notes, I did. I didn't have to take screenshots, I did. I didn't have to write one of them up on 'How to teach diving', but I did. And I'll write a 'poolside guide' too.

Anyone with enthusiasm for a topic and a nifty line in Slides/PPT skills can teach online. A lesson is a meeting online; we've all done hundreds of those now.

It's no longer e-learning is it? Or even distance learning.

It's why I orientated towards teaching (I have a Cert.Ed) - my first year towards a PGCE, Teaching online is simply a skill that teachers should have in their toolkit. The class could be small, or large, anywhere in the world, and at anytime. A recording and a set of questions in a quiz are easy enough to conjure up. 

Game over? Is the MAODE still taught.

Me? I'm after a course on Environmental Sustainability to go with my Green councillor and activist credentials, maybe something more to keep me up to date on creating and managing content for websites and social media. I attend classes on life drawing and printmaking. 

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