reflections on week 4

Reflecting on the online tutoring programme, I have experienced ups & downs throughout the duration of the course: initally being very open-minded to a new way of thinking (ie the VLE as opposed to my familiar F2F scenarios) and finding the excitment of doing new things (such as blogging!); a period of frustration and disillusionment during the middle of the course for reasons given in previous entries; feeling able to engage more effectively (?) in the group work in week 3...the final week has been, perhaps, the most trying in relation to my motivation...

I came to the course with an open mind to explore the potential for the online medium in my current teaching practice. In many ways, I can see the advantages of a blended approach especially in supporting the development of understanding of key issues in a given topic. We have recently gone through a process of 'kite-marking' the courses we offer (part of which includes a summative assessment) and I do feel that there is scope for an element of online tutoring to support those who sign-up to do the assignment.

From my experiences on the Oxford-Brookes course, I feel that the inventory I drafted earlier this week would be an effective means of managing this as I presented them (- hopefully this is not too presumptuous?!) My concern is that a significant (and increasing) number of students signing up to courses in the past do not have English as a first language and I wonder how this will impact on the F2F aspects, let alone a VLE...I feel there are more thoughts/discussions to be had in my workplace...

Thinking about the Oxford-Brookes course itself in relation to my inventory, I do feel that the outline did follow the 'rules' of constructive alignment. I felt there were clearly defined learning outcomes; active learning was encouraged with the social constructivist paradgim being the foundation of the programme; there was a balance between quantity & quality of contact time between student-tutor and student-student (responsibility for this being with the individual); there was a degree of flexiblity/range of learning opportunities and there was clear feedback throughout both from the tutors and from other students.

Where things were not so clear was 1) in the pre-determined goals of the course which reduced the ability of the group (in weeks 2 & 3) to set their own agenda to meet specific learning needs (although this may my lack of awareness of the freedoms rather than a fault of the course) and 2) that there seemed to be a lack of explicit ground rules (although, again, this may be something I missed!)

However, having said all that, I do feel I have learned much from the course in relation to course design and the role of the tutor that is, I think, transferable between the VLE and F2F environments. Most particularly, I liked the 'presage - process - product' model from Brook and Oliver (2003) which I am keen to explore further in terms of its application to teaching and learning, whatever the setting.

So, 'onwards and upwards...'