Blog 1 : Reflection
1.
Post 1: Reflection
Context: I am a lecturer in Academic Literacy at CPUT where I work with Chem 1
students as part of their Communication course. There are 48 students enrolled
in the course and the aim of my section is to improve their academic reading
and writing. The students are participating in an on-line computer-based course
designed by Pearson Publishers, which we are piloting on the Bellville and Cape
Town campuses. The learners are varied, some being very computer literate while
others are not computer literate at all. The students attend weekly sessions
where they work through reading and writing activities on the MyFoundationsLab
programme of Pearson. They have just registered and have to complete a pre-test
to determine their level of academic proficiency. The programme will then place
them at a level from where they will start working through several levels.
The challenge: The first challenge I encountered was to register all students on the
system. This is still ongoing. From here, the next challenge will be to keep
all students involved, motivated and engaged. I have used the in-house lms (Blackboard) to communicate with
the students but have found their responses not very engaged. They were
requested on Blackboard to complete the pre-test and only 3 students have
responded so far. During their next contact session I will discuss this with
them to determine any problems they might experience.
Intended outcomes: I would like to find a way to communicate more easily with the students,
as I do not see them on a regular basis. I would like to explore different
technological options, such as smses, facebook groups, twitter or blogs to
determine what would be the most successful way for lecturers to communicate
with the students. For the Pearson programme to be implemented successfully,
there needs to be buy in by the students. I would like to determine the success
of this and to investigate ways to enhance teaching and learning for 1st
year students.
Hope your students will "buy in" for the Pearson programme. All first year students struggle with academic reading and writing....hopefully you can implement your findings at other departments that you service and help as well......like Food Technology!!! :)
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteNice blog. How did you post the blog to the CHECET 2013 Blog Page...
This challenge is relevant for many of us - even when we do have face-to-face contact with students. It's going to be interesting to see which of the technologies you are considerng will be most effective in increasing communication with your students.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments! I battle most to get buy in from the students. Especially I am not their full time lecturing but merely coming in as support. I am considering partnering with the Communications lecturer as that may give me more access to the students. This is not really credit bearing either, which makes it more challenging. I liked your ideas on Twitter and Facebook. From an informal survey in class it seems students are all connected to Facebook and they all have cellphones. They have limited Internet access off campus and little time to access computers during lecture times. That means their access to computers will be limited to campus time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the well structured and concise reflection Hanlie
ReplyDeleteMobile learning strategies could work very well, as long as there is an authentic learning task they can engage in. I like your perspective on the use of technology to foster communication.
The challenges you mention are quite important. Seems that without power to assess, and the importance of the pilot project with/for Pearson it is going to be difficult to get the students to "come to the party".
I guess one can go the reflection route as well - i.e. to have the students blog/ write Facebook posts/ tweets etc. on how they experience the Pearson process. In the reflection process the students have to write short pieces on which you can give feedback and so can ascertain their literacy skills, as well as knowing what to pick up in class. It will have to be something they cannot resist to take part in ;)
Maybe excite them about your plans for the course (and them) by using in-class time more for this kind of feedback (i.e. on the process).
Looking forward to see how your case study grows over the next few weeks. I think your exploration (surveys etc) will (hopefully) give more direction to your planned intervention.
Good luck
Hi Hanlie
ReplyDeleteThis is a quite a daunting problem/opportunity and I appreciate the way you are going around it. The main challenge here for you will be to focus on only one aspect of the problem for which you can develop an intervention which can be easily deployed without upsetting the existing Pearson arrangement.
I agree with JP that using the mobile phone to gauge student engagement with the Pearson tasks will be a good starting point. But I would also suggest that you make this intervention very simple and couple it with what the students are using already. For example, are they on (Facebook? MiXit , Twitter and BBM on the blackberry).
If not, then just use the mobile phone on its own, especially if Blackboard can accommodate the mobile applications.
Black board has a mobile platform available at http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Mobile/Resources/Demos.aspx
but if this is not accessible, you could design something simpler.
Some of the affordances the mobile phone has are its accessibility, immediacy and being able to personalise leaning for each individual.
We should be able to capitalize on these going forward.
This is very exciting!
Rita