[ShunaMarr]

I did both the questionnaires and agree with comments above, but there is room for ambiguity in what the questions are measuring. When it asks ‘do you worry about risks of digital dependence’ are you measuring my level of worry? or the level I think we are at risk of digital dependency? When it asks do ‘I actively make time in my diary when not using digital technology’ I immediately thought of me making myself appointments in my diary to go to the gym to do a workout (which I have recently taken to do, so I purposefully make time for it) – but I have my heart rate monitor hooked up to my iphone to measure my calorie burn. Does that count as using digital technology or not? It might affect the way I answer.

Maybe that’s a bit pedantic but as others have said elsewhere, what is the purpose of these surveys, questionnaires or quizzes, apart from a bit of fun (which they were – I laughed at me being described as an ‘information junkie’ and the analysis that ‘you cannot live without your smartphone’ LOL – got me to a ‘T’!)

The only thing that any of these online questionnaires have done is make me reflect on what is involved in studying online. But then if that’s all it’s meant to do, fair enough. 🙂

[ShunaMarr]

I wasn’t impressed with any of the questionnaires for the reasons other have already outlined in other posts in this topic  – although what they did do was make me reflect on what aspects were involved in taking an online course. So in that respect I agree with James – what is the purpose of these questionnaires?

I did all 4 and I think all of them they asked how much I ‘needed’ to study online because of home or work commitments. I said I didn’t ‘need’ to study online and it brought my score down as being suitable for online learning (I checked by going back and changing my answers to ‘yes it fitted in with my work needs).

Does this measure motivation? If I ‘have’ to study online does that make me more or less likely to succeed? I’m not sure how not being tied to online study made me less of a willing participator. So I think the purpose of giving a ‘score’ is a bit problematic.

Apart from making me reflect on the 4 main aspects of what is involved in online learning  (computer literacy, time management, being an able participator in an online environment and self motivation) I’m not sure what else it did. However, maybe that’s all it was trying to achieve?

[ShunaMarr]

I can procrastinate at Olympic level standards at times, but it never stops me always achieving my deadlines; the two are not mutually exclusive. 🙂

[ShunaMarr]

Very useful post Imogen – thanks for taking the time to share it. I didn’t realise how much I agreed with the points until I saw them all written down.

[ShunaMarr]

I agree with Sharmina – I think we should decamp elsewhere pretty soon – Roger suggested setting up a Moodle page for us. I think that would be a good idea as we could have several discussion threads going, as suited us, and they are much easier to follow.

A also agree Sharmina, that the webinar wasn’t great. I didn’t actually sit in on it live as I was busy elsewhere, but I did look in on it later. I won’t be following them live as they seem to rely on Java and my husband won’t have it on the PC as its security has been heavily compromised and it downloads all sorts of malware with it.

However, I did see that they publish a 2 minute round up of the slides afterwards, with a brief voiceover. I also looked at the webchat script. That looked enough to get the gist of what was being discussed, although to be honest I’m still not sure where the 1:25 ratio came from nor what it related to – so the learning point was lost for me. 🙁

[ShunaMarr]

Oh boy – someone actually wants to hear about the online game….:) I have been boring the pants off anyone who will listen for the past two years about my new module haha. Ok, well you did ask…

The BA (Hons) Tourism and Airline Management degree is a joint honours and one that I have developed from scratch in the past 5 years since I started at Napier. I teach the specialist airline modules in the course. In the 4 years of the degree they take several modules (Transport for Tourism, Airport Management, Global Airline Industry and Airline Marketing).  The new module (Airline Management) is in the final trimester of 4th year (ie running now), so draws on the stuff they’ve covered in the previous modules and where they are now putting theory into practice.

It took me two years from conceiving this module to developing it because it took a long time to source a game and develop the idea of how it would run (as well as all the administrative hoops we have to jump through). I now have contacts for several airline and other management related games if you were interested?

I understand about being confused about what happens in a game – however, a colleague I came across in another university allowed me to sit in on a game they were running for their students last year, which was very helpful. It is that same game I am now using.

Once you actually see what goes on it’s fairly straightforward. It is basically a simulated world – obviously backed up by sophisticated databases that do number crunching based on the parameters you set.

The students formed themselves into small groups (they decided that 3 was best in this class, as it distributed them evenly) and they set up their airline – I gave them some funds to start off with and they decided what type (business model eg low cost carrier or whatever) their airline was going to be, what routes they’d fly, in which part of the world, what types of aircraft they would run, onboard configuration of seats, what prices they’d charge, whether they charged for luggage, how they’d market it etc.

Obviously to be able to set this airline up with some degree of understanding, I had to front-load the lectures – so I did 12 lecture/discussion sessions up front in the first 6 weeks. I told them about how to write a business plan, pros and cons of different types of strategy, aircraft etc – all the stuff they’d need to know. There were also video instructions on how to set up the airline put into Moodle (provided by the game company).

I was very aware that I didn’t want to disadvantage anyone by making the game part of the assessment – so what they do in the game and whether the airline is a success or not is not relevant to their grade. The first assessment they do is a Business plan – where they set out their Business Strategy, Operational Plan, Marketing Plan and Financial Plan – up front before they play the game. (One per airline, so a group assessment worth 40% of the overall grade)

They then play the game. What happens is that once they have set up their airline (which they did over the last month in tutorials with me helping them) they then run it for 3 years (a speeded up 3 years obviously). They make decisions – I do a ‘batch run’ – this is where the game is closed, there is a bit of background number crunching going on (doesn’t take long – depends on how much number crunching needs to go on but in under 20 minutes, usually less). When the game reopens, three months have passed. The students look at their results and see whether they’ve made or lost money, whether aircraft need taken out of service for maintenance etc – they then decide how to react and adjust prices, change routes or whatever.

Once they have made their adjustments there is another batch run. These can be set for whenever you like – I’m doing this one once a day for 12 days – Over this period of 12 days I shall have 12 batch runs which will give them 3 years worth of data. I can put a spanner in the works by adjusting things as the administrator eg I can adjust demand up and down in an area or even to a particular airport, I can hike fuel prices, I can even do things like crash a plane (haven’t decided if I’ll do that yet lol).

After the end of the simulation, the students then have to write the second assessment, which is an individual reflective account (worth 60% of their grade) of how well their airline performed compared to their business plan and what they have learned about airline management as a result of having played the game.

As has been mentioned elsewhere – I feel it is always important not to use technology or a gadget for the sake of using the gadget. What I wanted the students to learn was about airline management -the game is only the means to an end.  But it will give them much more hands on and practical experience and a much deeper understanding than if I just did  the usual lecture/tutorial scenario – in having to run their own airline they see direct cause and effect as a result of decisions they make.

I know this for a fact because although I’ve been teaching this subject for 15 years, it was only through playing the game that I really understood WHY things had happened in the way that I intellectually knew they had. So if it can enrich my understanding, then it must surely do the same for students who on the whole start from a lower base of knowledge and have more to learn.

I’m extremely excited about it as the students have been absolutely loving playing the game and running their own airline – I have had practically perfect attendance for the whole module – I think 2 students have each missed one class for the whole 10 weeks so far. Amazing!

Hope this is of interest to you Roger and the rest of the group. If you wanted to have a looksee Roger, I am currently running a simulation now – the students ‘go live’ on Tuesday. You could sit in on it if you like?

I would love to get ideas from other people about how they have enriched their teaching using other techie stuff.

Cheers

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Hi Shuna,

Thank you for your reply that there isn’t an obvious way that we have overlooked.  Hopefully this is something the Technical team (octel-tech@alt.ac.uk) will put on their to-do list.

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks Niall – yes that link worked and it was an interesting read. I have never even heard the term MOOC until Monday and so the learning curve on what it is and what it will involve has been steep (and somewhat in-my-face from a personal point of view), but your blog confirmed some of the limitations (and benefits) of what to expect from it, from what I’ve read elsewhere in the past couple of days.

Already I can see that many people (including myself) have identified some like-minded people through the forums and relocated from the big stream into a number of little ponds where we filter through the torrent of output as it goes past. As the drop out rate in these MOOCs seems to be high, and as the participants seclude themselves away using more accessible platforms, that torrent might become a lighter trickle as the weeks pass. I shall wait and see. 🙂

All the best

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

@Roger – for my part, Moodle is a much more familiar platform for me, so that would be good for me – I’d be very keen to see how your Moodle is set up compared to ours, as we just moved over to it this year from clunky old WebCT.

As for what is a MOOC – until 3 days ago I’d never even heard of it. I have no real concept of what it is…. ok just gone and read the Wikipedia definition – haha, love the graph showing the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ plunging into the  ‘trough of disillusionment’.

However, as I had no real expectations then I’m hoping I won’t become disillusioned ;P

I put my hand up here and admit that I have an agenda. My agenda is that either through participating in the activities or/and interacting with like-minded people, I am going to pick up ideas, concepts, hints and tips to challenge my own practice and help make me better at my job.

As my perceptions about these things have already been challenged in just the first 4 days, just through being exposed to the various outputs by people, and examining my own feelings about it, I imagine that’s going to happen whichever way I go.

I loved the materials shown in the link – yes that would be my idea of how to organise a course – and the way that our online courses are run too – this obviously isn’t going to be like that, but I am willing to give it a darned good go to get out of it what I can 🙂

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks Martin – yes, that did it. I hadn’t noticed the star before on the course reader. I had already spotted the subscribe button on the forum posts – what I meant was follow ups on the course reader posts. However, if I have them on my favourites I can always easily go back and see them there.

I’m sure that as the weeks progress it will all become familiar. After the initial deluge of information coming back from holiday to 200 emails, it has now bedded itself down a bit and I’m getting myself organised into groups and identifying ways of managing the information into bite-sized chunks. It’s interesting to watch the process of how we go about doing that as much as anything. People obviously feel happier when things are more manageable.

Looking forward to next week when we start proper.

Cheers

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks for the reply, both.

Dranners, I liked your idea about “learning how to think and behave within a different, non familiar context” – a MOOC is certainly a new experience for me….but then I thought… is it a non familiar context though?

I have been on Facebook since 2009, was an early Google+ adopter, and I also contribute to lots of different online forums through various web communities I’m in. I don’t feel overwhelmed by them in those places. I look at the various topics going on in the forums, and sometimes just read through what others have posted, but if the topic grabs me I’ll plunge in and add my tuppence ha’penny worth.

In fact I have the ‘My Fitness pal’ forums open on another tab at this moment and the way it is set up would be a great way to run this. You have your own ‘community’ where you have groups of ‘friends’ who get together and share stuff on a more personal level, building up relationships there and interacting on a daily basis (for doing small group activities) then the open forums where you can jump in and contribute to anything that catches your eye (for broader chat on specific topics where anyone can join in).

So I am used to contributing to forums, so although I’m new to MOOCs I’m not a newbie to online communities and so feel confident enough to comment that the way this one is set up isn’t really intuitive or well structured

– and also having had a browse round the ocTEL platform forum this morning it seems that we are actively being encouraged to find our own ways of forming meaningful communities rather than having ones imposed on us (half of me thinks that’s an easy cop out and half of me thinks we are being experimental lab rats to observe how we behave) – Jeesh I think I must be coming across as cynical there, but, hey, that’s what came up there, so must be a bit how I’m feeling. Actually, I think that when I feel confused I tend to get a bit bolshie, so my comfort zone boundaries must be being pushed (no bad thing).

So to what you said DoctorJen, after me saying that this would be a good place to chat, maybe it might be better to create a Facebook page for us, or somewhere that is better set up for forum chat, where we have our own little community of like minded souls?

On the other hand, that makes us more exclusive and takes us out of others being able to drop in and contribute, so maybe we’ll wait for the first week and see how it goes?

It appears from the way it’s set up that each week they will set up a new forum (at the moment we are in small groups in week zero.). Perhaps we could just have a new place each week? EG one of us posts ‘Mongrels week 1’ in next week’s forum – and we just have all of that week’s chat in that forum and then the next week we all congregate in ‘Mongrels week 2’ – how about that?

I also relate to both your final comments, Jen – what is learning? I imagine it’s a very individual experience and who can say what and when it happens? – so you’re not alone. And yes, I think that the way this seems to be panning out is that it is a huge facilitated sharing experience rather than a led course. In a way that’s quite exciting as I have often thought that the best part of any seminar or conference is always the bit where you get to chat with other practitioners and pick up great ideas and nuggets of wisdom from their experience, and pass on your own…

Which makes me think that I’ll end this long ‘stream of consciousness’ rambling (apologies, folks) by sharing with you the idea I saw elsewhere this morning that ‘the more you put in to it, the more you’ll get out of it’.

Looking forward to how the coming weeks pan out.

Cheers

Shuna

 

 

[ShunaMarr]

I use the course reader to skim through each day and see the email and other stuff that has been posted since I last looked. I’m not on the ‘as it happens’ JISC mailing list (I get a condensed daily update but that just tells me what the new posts on the course reader are) so I find it useful to go through and cherry pick things that jump out at me and strike my interest – just to see what’s going on in there.

However, what I’d like to know is – how can I go about saving a post I partiuclarly like to my ‘favourites’? I have worked out how to save forum posts to favourites, but I can’t see how to save a post I come across in the reader to my favourites list, so that I can come back to it later.

I’d also like to be able to be notified of follow up comments to posts that I’ve made a favourite – maybe there’s already a way to do these things but I haven’t worked out how yet.

This is my first MOOC and, on my day 4, I’m still finding my feet somewhat. It’s all still a bit daunting and bewildering but I’m going along on the basis that the more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it and seeing how it goes. Thanks for offering the support to us confused newbies 🙂

cheers

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks for the post James. I read your blog and also your tips and tricks – I could have done with that on day 1 but here I am on day 4 and an old hand at it already (Lol) such is the steep learning curve of participating in a MOOC (4 days ago I had never even heard the term MOOC before). At the moment it all feels a bit of a disorganised rabble, however, I agree with your comment that you get out what you put in, so I shall continue to push the boundaries of my comfort zone until it all gets more familiar. All the best.

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Hello Niall – here’s me doing my ‘caring tutor’ role, hating to spot someone make a post and seeing no one engaging or replying to them. So hello from me 🙂 This is my first MOOC – I tried to read your review of a previous MOOC but the link didn’t work. I have my doubts about how much I’ll get out of this, it all seems a bit of a disorganised rabble at the moment, but I’m trying to engage and see if I can mould it into something useful for me so I get something useful ou of it. All the best.

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Hi Elizabeth – I’ve just made a post on my own little discussion group page about exactly this thing – it seems if you click ‘reply’ to a comment (rather than posting a new comment at the end in the box) then that reply appears directly under the original comment – so new posts can appear on earlier pages rather than in chronological order. So far I’m keeping up with the new posts only because I’m getting email updates – but it seems a rather flawed system and means that the foorum is disintegrating into subchats. It would be really helpful to be able to set it into ‘most recent first’, but it doesn’t look like that’s the way it’s been set up.

[Author]

Posts