[ShunaMarr]

Hello everyone in the group – nice to meet you all and see most of you, now we’ve worked out how to upload our gravatars 🙂

Just thought I’d share some initial thoughts on our small group activity:

I’m finding this forum a bit confusing – it seems that if you press ‘reply’ to a previous comment, then it appears directly underneath that post and so new comments appear on earlier pages rather than in chronological order of posting. If I wasn’t getting email updates I’d be missing some of the chat. Does anyone else find this disorienting or is it just me? I don’t know how the overall conversation is progressing as it seems to have become disjointed into little sub-chats.

I also wonder how it will go next week when we are given a new topic – do we stay on these pages and introduce the new topic(s) here? I’m getting confused about what and where to post and so I have been just ‘lurking’ to a great extent.

It reminds me of my teacher training (and from my own long experience as a lecturer) that students don’t actually like being given much of a choice, especially at the beginning – they much prefer to be directed on the whole. I’m beginning to understand why, from their perspective. So far this all seems a bit of a disorganised rabble with confused structure – this grates on my OCD for structure and logical order LOL 🙂

Well, even from that point of view it’s an interesting experience but  I feel that unless we get a more organised structure I’m less convinced about how much learning will take place – well, ok we’ll all learn stuff – but whether it’s a positive and useful learning experience I’m less convinced. Although it could just be me showing some prejudice and putting up barriers because I’m feeling confused and disoriented. Maybe by June I’ll be a happy bunny but at the moment – even out of the big concourse and tucked away in my little seminar rooms – I’m feeling that we are chatting in little groups, waiting for the lecturer to arrive.

Anyway, that’s where I am so far on this first foray into the world of MOOCs – but it’s only day 4 for me, so maybe that’s an acceptable place to be? How are you all feeling about it?

Cheers for now

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

Hi Simon – I’m sure you’ve heard all the ‘Golden Hour’ jokes before 🙂  This is on my PDR too, so I’m in it for the duration lol!

Shuna

[ShunaMarr]

This sounds like a group I’d like to join – my primary aim for coming on this course is to improve my teaching practice and make it more student-led rather than teaching led. Judging by the previous posts this seems to be the aim of many in this group too, so perhaps we can support one another (although not sure what will happen when it comes to the next week’s activities – do we just stay in this group and introduce new topics? If we don’t, how will we find one another again?) Yes – you can tell from that ‘Crie de Coeur’ that I’m a newbie to MOOCs and feeling just as lost and confused as the rest of the freshers. (Actually, no bad thing to be reminded of how it feels I suppose).

I’m a lecturer in Tourism and Airline Management at Edinburgh Napier and have been there 5 years since completing my PhD. Previously I worked for many years in FE college. I have tried all sorts of different types of technologies over the years and not afraid to try new things. However, I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible and I am running hard just to stand still at times.

Technology , for me, encompasses any gadget that I can use – whether that be communication/interactive things like social networking or using voting clickers in tutorials. In many of the groups the definition of ‘technology’ seems to be more restrictive, but  for me, anything that will make my teaching more interesting, fun and help students to be better learners, would be included.

I have tried classroom clickers, I am pretty adept at creative uses of VLEs, I’ve used audio feedback, etc – in a new module running this trimester I’m using an online game, where students run their own virtual airline. So on the basis that I’d be happy to share my experience and ideas with you all if you’ll share your ideas with me, then I hope you’ll allow me to come on board? 🙂

 

[ShunaMarr]

That’s a wonderful analogy you’ve given there SolentRoger – that’s exactly how I felt yesterday, and I wrote a comment elsewhere this morning about people tending to be happier in wee ponds than in the big ocean. It does feel like I’m on a course with 12 of us and we have a wee focus group to discuss what goes on ‘out there’ :).

I’m reckoning by all the reminiscences this morning that I can identify with (I’d forgotten about the TV on a tall, wheeled trolley with the big flaps, and listening to the radio in primary school) that you are all over 21 lol! However, having said that, I agree that so much of this is very recent – we were still using TVs like that at college just a decade or so ago (and acetates on slide projectors – and even blackboards begads!)

It was on a TV just like that where I watched the second aircraft plough into the twin towers in 2001, called in to the next door classroom by my colleague to watch it unfold. So I have a point of reference to know that all of the technology we use today is very recent and the learning curve has been practically vertical.

I’m considered in my uni to be one of the trailblazers – at the vanguard of trying out new things in teaching – and yet I know that I am woefully behind all the most recent developments and that I am having to run hard just to stand still at times. My reputation seems to be based on the principle that I’m not afraid to try out new ideas – so many of my colleagues still seem to use blank slides with just words on their powerpoint presentations. According to some student feedback, some even just read from the slides! So I’m not resting on my laurels lol

Thinking about the topics we have to tackle in this forum this week, it seems to me that the people who have ventured onto such a course as this are likely to be mostly the ones who are interested in trying new things (on the basis that the course itself filters out those not interested). However, even within that, there seems to still be a huge diversity of experience and capabilities within the group (judging by the inability of so many to set up an email filter – and yes, despite my experience in many areas, I can’t do that either lol!). So this leads me to surmise that some people will have lots of experience in some areas, some people will have a little experience in a lot of areas, some will have little or no experience – but they all come with a desire to at least try.

Will a MOOC be able to provide that? Well, the comment at the start of this post probably answers that – we’ll all sort ourselves into little groups that make us feel more comfortable and we’ll have the odd foray into new activities to stretch ourselves a bit at a time. My personal choice for now seems to be this group, a quick scan through the twitter feed of a morning and a weekly digest of the week’s news.  As they state right from the start, it won’t be possible to keep up with all the content generated – but then, is it necessary? I have this sneaking suspicion that no matter which media I choose, I might still feel that all the best posts are happening elsewhere – but then, I only have so much time and effort to devote to it, and a lot of it doesn’t interest me. As long as I end up in a few weeks with a broader understanding than when I started, and a few good ideas about how to develop my modules over the summer, then I shall think ‘job done!’ 🙂

[ShunaMarr]

Yes, unless anyone knows of a better place to decamp to, it’s as well to stay here where we have links to it. As instructed, I have been off snooping around the site in best James Bond style and I have added my own thoughts to this post about why there was such a broohaha about the email links. It seems lessons have been learned on both sides as to how to approach a MOOC sign in:

http://octel.alt.ac.uk/communications-in-large-online-courses/

This also has some useful links in how to set up your course profile worth checking out.

In response to Sharmina – I have seen posts on various forums about the different understandings of what ‘technology’ is. For my own part, what I hope to get out of this course are ideas about how to improve my teaching practice and make it more interesting and help it to be more student centred rather than teacher led.

With that in mind, I think that any gadget that can be used to enhance my practice could be considered ‘technology’. I therefore agree that innovative ways of using things like powerpoint, youtube, Moodle (our VLE), Turning point clickers, audio feedback, online games etc would be of interest. I have used all of the above and hope to learn more about new technologies, but more particularly how people use them, in order to be able to adapt them to enhancing my own practice.

[ShunaMarr]

Thanks! Looks like we just need one more to be  a pack 🙂 what will we discuss first? 🙂

[ShunaMarr]

Hi there fellow Scots person. 🙂    I am not in the sciences but, in every other respect, what you are looking for from this course is what I am looking for too, so I hope you don’t mind me posting my initial introduction post alongside yours?

My big question for the course is – how can I use the ideas I see on here to improve my teaching practice and make my lectures and tutorials more interesting?

I’m currently a lecturer in Tourism and Airline Management at Edinburgh Napier.  After working out in the ‘real word’ (lol!) for many years, earning my daily crust in a variety of sectors, I then worked in FE for several years in Travel and Tourism, before taking the plunge and doing my PhD at Stirling, which I completed 5 years ago. That was my ticket into HE and I’ve been there 5 years now. I have a PG Diploma teaching qualification and I’m going to be starting my BOE (Blended and Online Education) PG Cert this Autumn.

As a kind of preparation for this, I thought this course would be the right way to expand my knowledge of this area and hopefully give me some good teaching ideas for next trimester, as I’m about to overhaul some modules that need a revamp.

I’ve always been pretty innovative and have tried all sorts of different technologies in the past (e.g. Turningpoint clickers, audio feedback, online games, Moodle quizzes etc) to jazz up what I do – I routinely use videos and infographics to illustrate points.

However, I’d be really interested to see how other people use technology to make their teaching more interactive and student led. I feel that too much of my approach has been from the perspective of students being viewed as ’empty vessels’ that need filling with info, when I really long to be the ‘guide on the side’ aiding them to finding out stuff for themselves, as I believe that they will understand it better and retain it longer. So basically, I am looking for ideas on how to empower my students to become better learners and make their learning experiences more interactive and enjoyable. Lets see how this pans out eh?

Shuna

 

 

[ShunaMarr]

Is there room for another mutt of indeterminate pedigree in this group? This one sounds like my kind of people.

I have come late to the party because I’ve been on hols the past week (Scottish Borders – good walking country if only it wasn’t so bloomin’ cold! So much for this ‘Siberian spring’ we are having 🙁

So, about me… I’m a lecturer in Tourism and Airline Management at Edinburgh Napier.  After working out in the ‘real world’ (haha! ;P) for many years, earning my daily crust in a variety of sectors, I then worked in FE for several years, before taking the plunge and doing my PhD at Stirling, which I completed 5 years ago. That was my ticket into HE and I’ve been there 5 years now. I have a PG Diploma teaching qualification and I’m going to be starting my BOE (Blended and Online Education) PG Cert this Autumn. I thought this course would be a good way to break myself into it (‘it’ being TEL-related things).

I’ve taught on online courses when I was at Stirling and we are big users of Moodle (and WebCT before it) at Napier, so I’m not scared of technology but I do admit to not having enough time to keep abreast of everything that’s possible.

Don’t know if these credentials get me into this group?

Shuna

 

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