Courses and tutors - reflections

Well that was very fast paced - not quite sure where last few weeks have gone, think a huge amount of thinking on my part - hasn’t actually been done yet Lots more to think about this week which has affected how I am thinking about assessment & measurement, participation, student comfort level, satisfaction, motivation to learn and the role of institutions.

I attended a session and workshop on Friday about peer instruction led by Eric Mazur (it was such a lively session and he was able to explain in such wonderful clarity, injected with simple humour and honesty, about his experiences - a really great presenter) and how he completely changed his standard delivery in around 1991/2, how he started conversations with other professors at Harvard - breaking into traditional ways of thinking about content delivery, how use of conceptual questions both at the beginning and end enhanced his understanding of what his students understood, how breaking up lectures into discussions and encouraging students to lead sessions has helped him to quickly identify problems they were having and provide advice / explanations. Also how the students felt about the experience - i.e. we are at Harvard, we are paying a lot money and now you expect us to teach ourselves
Better understanding leads to better problem solving even if you do less of it, but reverse is not true.

Other things that have stood out this week in the blogosphere for me was George Siemens presentation on the future of courses, that with increasingly distributed content, the value of networks and reputation of thinkers / theorists may be a way forward in how to try and assess or accredit learning that has not been completed by a formal learning course. What is the value of university education ? Is there any at all ? Is the concept of university simply a higher state of awareness at times, that takes you away from your day to day work to explore concepts? How does the student as stakeholder feel about it ?

Should you go straight into work at 16/18 or whatever and the role of university is enhanced performance support, to help you manage and investigate how you fit in with an organisation, how to explore problem solving, provide safe sandbox / lab environments so that you don’t cost the organisation millions of £s in damage limitation either through loss of reputation, loss of clients etc or more positively, how you can enhance the organisation’s reputation / bring in new clients (that’s a measure of value I guess). Ricardo Semler mentions in Maverick and Seven Day Weekend that at Semco people have freedom to make their mistakes at work.

Also from blogs, the concept from CSAIL and the project with audio wikis, they have tried an experiment in India and South Africa at creating audio wikis which are searchable and a huge benefit being that they are low resource - not just in terms of cost because all it needs is a mobile device (doesn’t have to be high end smartphone) but also in terms of people’s time spent contributing and editing the wiki. Add in social networking using VOIP.. possibilities of tying up ends that would never have met previously is very exciting. Think of all the resources on Curriki and open courseware like MIT or Open University in UK which could be searched, edited by talking into a mobile device.

So where does that leave tutor and an online one at that ? As networks of open distributed content, open sandbox labs e.g. in a 3D environment as well as physical buildings are appearing, what steps can be taken as an online tutor facilitator / mentor to help students who are studying courses now?

Considerations - How to assess their contributions and participation, how to provide meaningful guided feedback to help them explore further or design conditions that help them get out of a stuck place. How to encourage students who are using an online environment for the first time to - have a go at having a conversation using text or audio, have a go at reflecting and documenting their ideas in a public or group searchable resource such as a blog or wiki. How to free themselves from feeling that they have to ‘own’ their written content entirely - that its ok for someone to edit and adapt or make a comment based on it (and that they will suitably accredited as a result); and finally how to design conditions that allow students to participate in online network building and communities, build on their research and document their own theories.

Starting with little steps, building in usage of wikis, blogs, microblogs or personal areas where ideas can be reflected, documented and ideally shared; encouragement of shared research / resources - this is nothing new in 2008 to some people, but these little steps can help those who have been involved primarily in research at universities and less focus on learning & teaching. Show and share examples of where it has worked or not, student feedback is really essential here too. As well as designing conditions for online student networking and communities, design conditions for online community building within academic staff, so they can experience the student experience at first hand as well.

This entry was posted on 09/03/2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under Technology, eLearning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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