New course, new term, new uni.

Well, I am continuing the GCTE, but this term am studying a course through USQ instead of my home institution of CQUniversity. I'll be quite interested in the differences.

The first difference I have noticed is in the introductions - obviously not an institutional, but more an individual difference... We have been asked to introduce ourselves by one word or image and describing that word or image. I read through the 8 or so posts that were there, and noticed that they were quite personal. Most of the posts revealed quite intimate details about the students' lives. This made me feel a bit uneasy... how much do I share of my life? Do I want to share the sorts of details in those posts with people I don't know?

So that raises questions: Does sharing intimate personal details with your learning peers help you to engage with the learning? Does a personal connection with the others in the class help you to be willing to commit more effort to learning? Does opening yourself up (potentially to attacks on you as a person, or what you believe) to people you don't know, help your learning?

Really.

Then turn to being the teacher/lecturer/facilitator. Does opening up to your students help their learning? Is there some personal connection that has to be made so that your students will study harder (read as not let you down)? Do you risk the exact opposite and the students will dislike you? Does revealing your own information mean that you are wanting the students to do the same? What kinds of professional boundaries might this overstep?

I'm not much into sharing personal details either in a class or as a lecturer. Am I ashamed? Am I fearful (as per forum post), or is it justified? Being a 'thinker' rather than a 'feeler', and knowing that many other people are... this is hard to answer.

Standby as I investigate!

Other tools

Apart from webquests, which I will go into more detail in at some stage, the rest of the tools on this page are very similar to those already covered. Slideshare, file storage, and music, certainly have the same problems, advantages and uses.

WIKIPedia

A great tool for basic understanding. It is often written in a way that is more general knowledge and this is useful to students who are only starting to study the material. I would actually encourage its use (informally).

Google Earth

Great tool, have played with it an awful lot, including some of the extras and user defined parts. Would be excellent for history and geography. I can see the assignment to be find the historic places, or track an explorer’s path or something like that. Unless I used it to find and describe the physics of certain bridges or buildings, I think it would be way too over the top for my course :)

Podcasting

Audiofiles are not particularly useful in Physics. Would be rather boring. See my post on videos as to how I would rather do things.

YouTube

Yep, great tool. I encourage students to use it themselves, and post the links on a discussion forum. Though not compulsory or for assessment, some have done so, and I’m sure a lot more have used YouTube without reporting it.

Quizzes

I think we’ve all used quizzes in one way or another. I much prefer to use the quizzes embedded in lessons in moodle to give better feedback. This makes it a learning tool instead of just a test. For summative assessment, however, care needs to be taken about when and where feedback is given to ensure that the students do actually have the understanding required, and enough, but not too much prompting is given along the way.

I have used them with great success in a non-academic course and would be happy to move them to academia, in both formative and summative assessment. Students also say they enjoy the lessons, and that they are better than quizzes.