Online Learning? I'm Student Again...for 11 weeks

I love learning and am a firm believer in the importance of continued professional development. I have been out of education for over a year now 

To continue my CPD activity I have enrolled on an online course, this is the first online course that I have completed (other than online training, which tends to be fairly quick, not interactive and full of prerecorded videos, all culminating in a multi-choice question quiz and printable certificate). 

In this blog I will reflect on the experience of taking part in an online short course. The course runs from week of 13th January to week of 9th March. 

In the first instance I have been provided with a timetable and given access to an online learning environment, which include an area to chat to my tutor and other learners on the course. The timetable sets out sessions for webinars and indicates times when we must talk to other learners. So my initial thought is that the course will be fairly interactive, rather than just working through materials on your own. 

As of the 14th January I have completed all but one of the orientation tasks, the last being to introduce ourselves on the online chatroom. I am putting this off as no-one else has introduced themselves and going first feels scary, there is not guidance regarding what to include in this introduction and frankly I do not want to come across in the wrong way, say too much or too little. On reflection this is counterproductive, as everyone else may be feeling the same and then no-one will comment. In situations like this I often consider what it is I would say to a student and that would be something along the lines of 'everyone is feeling the same' with the implication that you should just do it. 

It is now the 29th January and I have just posted my introductory message onto the site. The deadline to do with was the 31st January and from the looks of it there has been a last minute rush from many of those enrolled. 

Coming up we need to test our webcam and speaker connections for interactive digital classroom activities. I have no experience of learning like this and I am a little apprehensive about it going in. It somehow feels more scary having to meet people digitally, than face-to-face. 
The course gets started officially this week. It will be interesting to see how this experience compares of education compares to my other experiences!