[Stephen Brown]

I agree that its difficult to say which approach  is  used most because the approaches used tend to reflect the intended learning outcomes rather than my personal preferences, so the mix will change depending on the curriculum and the student cohort.  That feels right to me, as the whole thing is about learners and learning rather than me as a teacher.  Asking whether using all these different approaches confuses students is a very good question.  Even though I talk to them explicitly about knowledge construction and the social dimension to this they seem to find any deviation from standard lectures and essay writing a bit mysterious.  They have referred to their experiences on my module as “learning by stealth” which they explain as meaning they feel they learn a lot but can’t easily pinpoint when or how it happens because there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of teaching going on in the module. I guess you could say that is confusing in terms of their conscious understanding of how they have been learning but at the same time helpful because they have nevertheless acquired a lot of tacit knowledge about learning as well as explicit knowledge related to the course.

[Stephen Brown]

“The part of the assessment that really was challenging was the peer evaluation part.  It was extremely difficult to assess each individual person’s contribution to their project based solely on their portion of the presentation.” I agree with this and for this reason think its best to allocate group presentations group marks, although the feedback on individual performance in the presentation can be individualised.  if an individual mark is required then I find it works if you add a separate but related, assessment activity. Ive described an example here: http://octelreflections.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/approaches-to-assessment/

[Stephen Brown]

Asking learners to actively reflect on and record their responses to feedback sounds like a good way of helping students to understand what the feedback means and to strengthen their understanding of the subject but I agree that its unlikely that some will do it without some form of extrinsic reward. Badges have been mentioned quite a bit on Twitter in the last few months.  I wonder if you could give students a badge for just responding and award a prize of some sort (marks?) for the greatest number of responses at the end of of the year/course/module. That would be quite easy to automate.  It would obviously open to abuse…any old response would  trigger a badge.  But the responses of the high frequency responders could be reviewed for quality as well as quantity.  While that would add to the tutor assessment load, it would be a relatively small addition compared with trying to assess the quality of every response.

[Stephen Brown]

Hi Phil, yes I see your point, if you take the clicker package as delivered off the shelf, including the way its been programmed. On the other hand if you can modify it a bit so that its not completely managed by the teacher  perhaps that opens up some interesting possibilities for more learner-centred activity.  i wonder if anyone has any experience of modifying the clicker  tool in this way, and how easy it is to do?

[Stephen Brown]

Hi Sancha, just to say thank you for posting the link to this lovely, playful, engaging and informative resource. Im definitely going to use this one.  The stop animation technique is great too, although the idea of having to create so much cut paper material, shoot so many pictures and do so much editing is daunting!

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

The thing I really like about a well designed Prezi is that one can see the overall shape of the presentation and how its component parts fit together.   The (motion sickness inducing) zoom transitions help to provide context if appropriately designed.  Powerpoint by contrast is essentially linear.  If you want to provide overview/context then you have to create extra slides explicitly to do that rather than use the presentation itself. I think where I agree  that Prezi is like “Powerpoint with seasick transitions” is when its designed as a linear sequence. …which really doesnt take advantage of its key feature: zoomability.

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Hi Peter, I think the disnction you have made between mind maps and concept maps is an important one and I agree the discipline of describing the relationship between entities is important, but I dont think its always necessary so  I like the idea of learning just one tool that can be used for both kinds of diagrams.Ive used Xmind http://www.xmind.net/ a bit and it seems quite easy to use.  Its similar to Cmap but seems to offer a greater variety of diagramming styles and more richly annotated diagrams if you need them, but it can also be used to produce simple mind maps.

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Hi Sancha, Im wondering if youve tried XMind http://www.xmind.net/? Its another concept mapping tool that can be shared and used collaboratively.  Theres a brief explanatory video on the home page. Ive used it a bit and it seems quire easy to learn.  You may still have those bandwith problems though.

Cheers Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Hi,  I just wanted to say that I agree with Phil that the introduction is important.  I think starting with an enthusiastic introduction in which you explain  to students  your teaching methods and the reasons for them combined with an invitation to suggest and try out alternatives is a good way of demonstrating that learning is a collaborative and generative activity in which we  are all participants and all have something to offer.  This seems to me the antithesis of Helen Keegan’s ARG based approach which I found quite uncomfortable to watch.  She seemed to me to be revelling in the priviliged power being a “puppet master” gave her.  But maybe I’m doing her an injustice? PS.  like the idea of using some of the ocTEL video clips in an introduction. I think  I’ll try that out.

[Stephen Brown]

Hi Lynne, yes the same happened to me and then after a bit it just worked propoerly.  Maybe take another look at this tommorrow? Im MOOCed out for today!

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Yes, it seems to take a while to take effect.  Lynne has it worked for you now?

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Lynne, How far have you managed to get? Have you created a Gravatar account with the same email address as the one you have associated with your ocTEL account? And uploaded a picture to Gravatar?

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Hi again Duncan, my picture has magically appeared in the list of participants, so it must be working OK!  Thanks a lot for your help 🙂 I feel a bit more like I belong now.

Stephen

[Stephen Brown]

Thanks for your tip Duncan.  I was using different emails.  Ive fixed that but my picture still doesnt show up on ocTEL (although if I hover over the picture box it does….is that how its supposed to work?)

Cheers Stephen

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