Reflection - eLearning for Educators

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

- Henry David Thoreau (1857)

Don’t merely write to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

I’m learning that learning is an emotional thing because we’re being vulnerable. Words like emotional, spiritual, sacred, freedom, creative, and awareness are in our writing this week. Our posts are intellectual discussions that must be communicated with an emotional awareness to invite receptivity. Allowing the intellect to flow freely requires emotional peace, or at least tranquility. Excellent communication is a process both mental and emotional – even spiritual – because we have to care about the other person if we intend for them to listen to us! This need is heightened in written communications, which is how we communicate most online. Teaching itself is communicating with emotional intelligence! Online learning must assume that its participants are emotional beings or else those participants will become disengaged and drop out, which is so much easier to do online than in person!

Such great input from classmates, too. From Jessica: BIG – Best intentions, Interdependence, and Genuine regard. Think BIG. (Estevez, 2015) And from Jeri, who was an English major, like me, writing about the importance of page design: there’s lower online reading comprehension because there’s less of a spatial sense of where you are! (Hurd, 2015) Makes so much sense.

And we’re coming up with an “electronic personality.” As Brandy puts it about “peeragogy,” “express ourselves through writing (without being jerks).” He talks about the Ask the Class rule and the “ability to deal with emotional issues in a textual form.” (Breuckman, 2015) Alison wrote about the point of entry, what people need to know now, because they’re scanning. (Chinouard, 2015) Dana wrote about the emotional aspect of learning, of its creation quotient. (Gravot, 2015)