Tutors in Higher Education

[jrconlon95]

Hi Roger,

I would like to join in this small group for discussions.  I now teach Fashion & Textile Buying Management after a first career in the clothing industry.  I am relatively new to teaching – have just finished my MA after PGCE and keen to continue learning.  I  feel it is time to jump in and explore what technology can offer to my students and their learning.  I have dabbled in our VLE but really want to feel capable / confident of much more , particularly external resources.  I still need my arm-bands though – like other posts I am feeling quite bombarded and lost even though we are in the easy week zero.  I will post more tomorrow – just really starting this week.

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Lucy, your final comment really made me feel that I’m not the only ‘bewildered’ person on here. It is amazing the different ways to communicate, and trying to find out where and who to link with etc – it’s a bit like when I go for a meal, I much prefer a simple menu! But it seems that I/we and others are starting to find our way around the roots and branch of the course.

I’m not sure if next week we will then have some specific questions to answer relating to the group or if we just sort of share our own ideas as we go along, Suppose I’ll find out!

regards

Roger

 

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Sarla of course you can join this group – and my frustration with technology has just been added to by the fact that I’d written quite a long posting to you in reply, and then must have pressed the mouse pad in some place and it went . Arrgghgh

so much so, it will be great to find out more about your course and interests too and yes we are not too far away. I wonder if there are any events in the north that we might network at? I haven’t got involved in anything like that before from the teaching / elearning side of things. What type of people take the critical care course by the way and how many students? I thin my blog explains a bit more about the masters in public health I teach on

https://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

Right catch up soon

Roger

 

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Jim – wow you’re doing two MOOCs at the same time! the less said the better…. How does this course compare with the other one? are you going to be setting up your own MOOC now based on all this experience of have you been put off!

What work have you beeninvolved with around staff and student digital literacies aside from blackboard? we use blackboard too at Univ Manchester. It’s been ok but now as I start to find out more about other possible TEL I am seeing some of its limitations and want to start working outside of the blackboard a bit more in future.

I’ve replied to your blog with a question about RSS feeds as still unsure about how to connect with things .

thanks

Roger

https://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

 

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Trish – to wow students, don’t you have to give them expensive ipads and things? oh no, they already have all those! just teasing, it’s getting late. I think this touches on an important issue and I think one that has perhaps only got recognition since TEL came about. In the past, well certainly as a lecturer little attention was given (well I gave little attention compared to know) about teaching methods and student engagement I think. But now, a lot more work seems to be done which is great. My background in the NHS was running randomised controlled trials – now running a large RCT to examine the effect of different approaches now that would be be cool, though another nervous breakdown waiting to happen. RCTs of online education have been done in the US though and find positive effects.

My own thoughts are that the material needs to meet the students at the level that they are at, be timely to what they are meant to be doing, be related to their own experience (where possible and especially if postgrad) and to their likely occupation following the course; be in nice bit size nuggets, not to go over board with sensationalist colours and fonts and techno stuff, and follow good principles of general presentation.

Not sure if this helps – what do the rest of you think? It would be good to find out about how to engage staff aswell as more recently I’ve been doing staff training and such like.

I’m running a seminar for colleagues tomorrow so will find out if I have any skills at all in maintaining their interest!

regards

Roger

https://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Lucy – I’m definitely interested to learn more about peer to peer learning and for developing discussion forums/groups /activities for students in an online learning environment. This year I included a group based wiki which seems to have gone well and students interacted and produced a generally good assignment in their groups. But it does raise questions in terms of is this what students think they are signing up for when they do an online course or are they expecting it to be more like a one-way communication, a bit like distance learning in the past when it was sent through to you in the post.

regards

Roger

https://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Jane – the study skills course sounds exciting. I developed a self directed learning course for students in the final year of the masters and starting their dissertation. I’ve been wanting to develop something on critical thinking aswell as I think some students really struggle with this, especially those from cultures not used to challenging others.

 

I can see already that we have lots to talk about and shared interests. Of course we are coming up with more and more questions!

regards

Roger

https://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

[jimpettiward]

Hi Roger,

Yes, 2 Moocs is a bit daunting! For me, one of the things I like about the Mooc format is the fact that you can dip in and out of them, contribute more when you have a bit of time, or for topics of particular interest, then just lurk around for a bit at other times. I’m really enjoying the experience so far and think I’m getting a lot out of it. The other Mooc (OU Open Education H817) is structured slightly differently as it is delivered primarily via their Moodle platform and a blog aggregator – some really good communities have formed though, and so far I’m learning as much from other participants as from the ‘official’ material (which is kind of the point I guess). Early to say about this one, but looking forward to seeing how it develops and differs from H817.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how a relatively low-level, small-scale Mooc might work in my area. Definitely some exciting possibilities there.

In terms of Digital Literacies, I’ve been working with a colleague for a while on developing an OER – The eLearning Matrix – it’s in the early stages in terms of content but we’ll be adding more on Dig Lit in the Tutorials section in the coming weeks. There’s quite a bit on Blackboard already (which we call Weblearn at LondonMet…)

I’m also doing a small-scale project aimed at students, researching their experience of Digital Identity and Being a Digital Learner. The aim is to build a resource with advice, case studies, demos etc to help students manage their ‘digital lives’ (identity, study etc) more effectively. As we all know (I think!), the Digital Native idea is a load of old %*&&£$.

I’ve added a subscribe by email box to my blog. I also used the RSS feed to subscribe to yours and seems to work fine.

Jim

 

[virtualleader]

Hi Jim

Your response caught my eye and I have had a sneaky peek at your blog also. I am in the throws of redesigning a traditional-ish study skills module to be more about digital literacy and digital identitiy so I am interested in your research and the OER you are planning. I don’t feel I have huge amounts of time to devote to ocTEL – having just participated on the OLDSMOOC I am getting the hang of this mooc lark, and popping in and out will probably work best for me- but I am going to stick with this group/discussion as already it is yielding much food for thought. I also hope to contribute my own thinking and not just lurk in the corner 🙂

Jane

[trish_oc]

Hi Roger,

spent a good 10 mins yesterday drooling over the latest iPad… its funny cos I really want one tho I’m not terribly sure what for..

such is the power of TEL propaganda .. or just naked consumerism??

Anyway I absolutely agree with you that ” the material needs to meet the students at the level that they are at, be timely to what they are meant to be doing, be related to their own experience (where possible and especially if postgrad) and to their likely occupation following the course” but I think I’ve seen a problem in that the students are so incredibly diverse. In a recent online module I was facilitating 90% of the class just ‘got on with the weekly tasks’ but there was one who had to ask so many questions before he could do anything.. so my current dilema is how ( in my new online course developer role) do I approach  giving the students  ( who are on a Masters program) the content they need at the level that is apropriate.

Some most probably(definitely;-) know more than me and some are arriving from ground zero

Can TEL really help this issue….I suspect not but I think its great that by using TEL I may be able to reach just one or two more students.. How I’m attempting to do this is possibly for another post !!!

Trish

 

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Jim, I like the look of the elearning matrix and is certainly the type of thing I was thinking about seeing if I can get some support to develop for public health, though there will be relatively few public health OERs available to put on their, but hopefully overtime it might expand. How do you find the OERs? do you just keep scanning the internet or use resources such as Jorum?

And thanks for checking my blog

regards

 

Roger

octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Jane – glad the group is interesting for you. I’m not sure yet how I;l work with the rest of the course once it starts, but glad there is a smaller ‘room’ I can come to – and like you have already learnt things and perhaps this might be a start for some ongoing networking and links, who knows. I did a talk today on elearning in public health and even put up a slide of Rhizones – my colleagues think I’ve lost the plot!

Regards

Roger

octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com

 

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Trish, perhaps what TEL can offer when one is faced with a diverse student group is a range of different learning options, and at different levels. So for example (and I haven’t incorporated this into my own course yet, but would like to do in future) if you have students who feel confident with the basics of biostatistics for example, then maybe the can click and go straight to the next level, and that if they then struggle they can cover the ground that those new to the topic are covering. So even within the same course wrapper, or the same course teaching week, there can be a range of different levels brought in. So an introductory video, students might choose to skip (so why not suggest that they do as so me will anyway) but encourage new people to watch it, or some might want to go straight to self tests, but others might want to cover some of the skills part first. In fact there is an argument to test them on specific competencies first, and then just direct them to the learning that they need to then meet those competencies for which they didn’t come up to the mark on the first time.

Just a few thoughts, and very much new thinking for me aswell.  A good debate to be had on this subject though.

Already I get the sense that there might be a few topics that we might on this group wish to pursue in a bit more detail, and see if others want to join in too – maybe a hosted web conference or live discussion .

regards

Roger

http://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Kim, it sounds as if you should be helping to run this course, never mind a student on it. I’d like to hear more about the MA. I keep toying with the idea of more study and sort of convinved my self that I don’t need to sign up for another taught course and try and do more things like this. But in the back of my mind is still a bit of a nag to sign up again. Who did you do the MA with – the OU?

It would be good to hear about how the methods here reflect those from the OU model etc.

As for student motivation – I think that will be interesting on here as I know MOOCs are known for a big drop out, but it also raises the question as to what a ‘drop out’ actually is anyway.

Incidentally, can you tell me what the tags field underneath these postings is/meant fr?

regards

Roger

http://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com

[Roger Harrison]

Hi Rob, is your background from dentistry or more the technical side? The masters programme I teach on in public health includes links to the masters in dental public health. I actually started out as a dental technician but that’s many years and previous lives away.

It seems that student engagement and motivation or some shared interests in this group. I took part in some online classes led by Curtis Bonk from MIT in the States. He’s got a new book coming out I think soon on motivation and online courses. I met him in Manchester quite recently and find his work extremely inspiring and recommend looking him up.

 

regards

Roger

http://octelrogerharrison.wordpress.com/

 

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