My approach – flip flop floundering fish!

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“How could you achieve your learning outcomes if the activity were conducted differently?
Would this be an improvement? If not, why not?
What technology would you require if you did things differently?”

I don’t really understand this exercise. It would depend what I was learning where I’d be on this diagram of autonomous/individual/social/directed (which I could not find when I went to the web page because it was “below the fold”, scrolled down on the screen below some confusing instructions) .

By being online the learning activities have not been social and are confusing because I don’t know my peers. I feel a bit false commenting on other people’s blogs without much context. I don’t know what the learning outcomes are supposed to be – this is not clear to me, so I can’t really comment on this one.

Improvements

I’d like to have a rogue’s gallery of mugshots with twitter-style brief descriptions of the active course members. That would help. I’d like lots more direction – because it’s not directed I find myself struggling to try to do everything because I’m not sure what’s important. I can’t tell what depends on what. I’d like a visual flow chart guide to show me what activities depend on what.

I’d like even more understanding of what materials/discussions other people are finding  useful or popular. Dunno how you do that.

I am not able to learn synchronously because of my job but I don’t really mind that. I would like the webinars to be available as YouTube recordings though for better accessibility. (see James Clay’s blog) but this is probably time consuming and a pain to organise even if possible at all…

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Here’s the My course bit – not sure what if anything it has added…
My course
at what points of your course are there opportunities to express opinions and instincts?

Introductory orientation and general classroom atmosphere is that anyone can raise anything at any point.

at what point do you have to absorb information and how?

During lectures, exercises and to complete some assessments.

at what points do you work with fellow learners?

Lab hours (Friday afternoons) where they can come and get help with any issue in the computer lab

what percentage of the course is assessed individually or as a group?

Of the whole course 50% was group assessed but they were not my modules. My modules had about 15% “digitally enhanced patchwork text assessment”, which is kinda group work… http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/ltig/depta.aspx – otherwise it was individual.

What do you think this says about your teaching approach, and what would you like to do about it?

I think I’m bad at group work because I’m nervous about it going wrong and about interpersonal dynamics and about students getting appropriate credit for their efforts and about the sheer time burden of designing the group work well. Having said that, the exercise where they made their own short videos (groupwork) was probably the most successful of the whole course last year.

How might technology help, or hinder, you in this.

Technology generally gets in the way as it is a barrier to some students in completing their group work, unless helping other group members with their technology is made part of the assessment. I did this last year by offering bonus points for evidence of peer assistance, but one student objected vociferously that this was unfair on her as a non-techiie despite the bonus points being available for non -technical assistance too e.g. help with writing skills, design etc.

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