I'd presented the 'continue-stop-start' model for giving feedback on the course, but when we got down to it, the students preferred an open-ended discussion. My role during the giving of the feedback was to keep silent and write it down. Here's a summary of what they said:
They enjoyed the course, they experienced surprisingly few technical problems, and they felt they'd learned what it was they'd joined the course to learn. The course planning worked well (with one exception - see below), and they felt that they got the right kind of feedback from me at the right time.
The suggestion which came forward for next time was to increase the period between Assessments 2 and 3 by one week (i.e. have a two-week break instead of a one-week one). This had occurred to me after the event too … and I'll introduce this next time. When I was planning the course, I was concerned about its momentum and dynamic, but, in hindsight, I think that the group had sufficient momentum by this stage, so an extra week isn't going to slow things down.
All in all, the group felt that they'd had a very positive experience - and that the experience of working in world was generally very good indeed.
I'll make a post next week summing up my feelings about the whole experience too!
Friday 11 April 2008
Meeting 5 and Assessment 3
Meeting 5 on Thursday, 10th April was almost entirely dedicated to Assessment 3, the group presentation. The assigned task was for the group to make three, linked presentations which all had some connection to a common theme. The students would be marked both accordingly to how well they performed individually, and according to how well they managed to link their presentation to the other two. In addition to this they had an allocation of 10 marks each (i.e. 10% of the entire course mark) to award to themselves as a group to represent the work they'd put in collectively to enabling this presentation to happen.
On the day we began with the 'Photo Album' exercise, for which I'm grateful to my former colleague, Janet Harling. You draw a number of blank 'frames' which come to represent pictures in your photo album. The pairwork task then is for one student to describe the content of the photo and the other to show interest, by interventions and questions which keep the first student talking! The pedagogical aim of this exercise is to break the ice and to get students speaking English again, whilst the practical aim is to give me, the teacher, a chance to ensure that everything is working technically (and to fix things if they aren't).
It worked out exactly like this, with one student needing to leave and come back, another needing to adjust his mike and a third turning up quite late … The pairwork exercises worked quite well too!
There were two Assessment 3 presentations this evening (i.e. 6 students performed in all): one about various aspects of the making of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy; and the other about different types of sports people played. Both group presentations were performed really well - and I could see real progression in the students' oral English skills between Assessment 1 and Assessment 3.
When we'd finished, I went through the course evaluation procedure again and we moved down to the camp fire after the students had had time to discuss what they wanted to say, to hear what they thought of the course. More about this in the next posting …
On the day we began with the 'Photo Album' exercise, for which I'm grateful to my former colleague, Janet Harling. You draw a number of blank 'frames' which come to represent pictures in your photo album. The pairwork task then is for one student to describe the content of the photo and the other to show interest, by interventions and questions which keep the first student talking! The pedagogical aim of this exercise is to break the ice and to get students speaking English again, whilst the practical aim is to give me, the teacher, a chance to ensure that everything is working technically (and to fix things if they aren't).
It worked out exactly like this, with one student needing to leave and come back, another needing to adjust his mike and a third turning up quite late … The pairwork exercises worked quite well too!
There were two Assessment 3 presentations this evening (i.e. 6 students performed in all): one about various aspects of the making of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy; and the other about different types of sports people played. Both group presentations were performed really well - and I could see real progression in the students' oral English skills between Assessment 1 and Assessment 3.
When we'd finished, I went through the course evaluation procedure again and we moved down to the camp fire after the students had had time to discuss what they wanted to say, to hear what they thought of the course. More about this in the next posting …
In between Meetings 4 & 5
First there was a presentation to give on Gotland which took up the entire weekend, and then the whole family came down with a stinking cold … Life's never boring!
The main business of Meeting 4 was the Role Play Exam, and there were a few people who couldn't make it that day. It took a few e-mails to fix a time when they could all meet together, but we eventually fixed on Wednesday, 16th April as the day.
I'd also asked students to form groups of three to do Assessment 3 at Meeting 5 (the group presentation), and one of them notified me at the very last minute (24 hours to go) that she'd not been able to find anyone. I didn't manage to fix that in time for Meeting 5, but at least that's also fixed for next week.
This problem isn't a specifically Second Life problem, but is rather connected with the nature of a skills-based course. If you're going to test people's performance - particularly in conjunction with other students - then they just have to be there on the day. I'd allowed for this contingency in my course hours budget, though, so it hasn't 'cost' anything extra.
Apart from that, preparing for Meeting 5 was fairly straightforward, since the actual teaching at the Meeting is fairly minimal. I adapted a common warm-up exercise to get the students started speaking English again - and to make sure that all the equipment was working. Then I created three new layouts on the database: 1) the Assessment 3 marksheet; 2) the summary of course marks; and 3) the report form which officially reports the results to the office so that they can be entered on to LADOK (the Swedish national university results database).
Two of the students sent visual aids to me in advance for use at Meeting 5, so they needed uploading to SL, and I also needed to upload the slides relating to Meeting 5 for my own use. These included a facsimile of my Assessment 3 marksheet and a suggestion for a framework for the course evaluation which happens at the end of the course.
There's also a standard, official, computerised, 32-standard-question course 'valuation', which Högskolan will send out to anyone who has a student computer account (only four of the students on this course fall into that category) on 29th April, but that's something fairly separate from a proper evaluation to find out how the course went and what the students actually thought of it. More about this, though in a later post.
The main business of Meeting 4 was the Role Play Exam, and there were a few people who couldn't make it that day. It took a few e-mails to fix a time when they could all meet together, but we eventually fixed on Wednesday, 16th April as the day.
I'd also asked students to form groups of three to do Assessment 3 at Meeting 5 (the group presentation), and one of them notified me at the very last minute (24 hours to go) that she'd not been able to find anyone. I didn't manage to fix that in time for Meeting 5, but at least that's also fixed for next week.
This problem isn't a specifically Second Life problem, but is rather connected with the nature of a skills-based course. If you're going to test people's performance - particularly in conjunction with other students - then they just have to be there on the day. I'd allowed for this contingency in my course hours budget, though, so it hasn't 'cost' anything extra.
Apart from that, preparing for Meeting 5 was fairly straightforward, since the actual teaching at the Meeting is fairly minimal. I adapted a common warm-up exercise to get the students started speaking English again - and to make sure that all the equipment was working. Then I created three new layouts on the database: 1) the Assessment 3 marksheet; 2) the summary of course marks; and 3) the report form which officially reports the results to the office so that they can be entered on to LADOK (the Swedish national university results database).
Two of the students sent visual aids to me in advance for use at Meeting 5, so they needed uploading to SL, and I also needed to upload the slides relating to Meeting 5 for my own use. These included a facsimile of my Assessment 3 marksheet and a suggestion for a framework for the course evaluation which happens at the end of the course.
There's also a standard, official, computerised, 32-standard-question course 'valuation', which Högskolan will send out to anyone who has a student computer account (only four of the students on this course fall into that category) on 29th April, but that's something fairly separate from a proper evaluation to find out how the course went and what the students actually thought of it. More about this, though in a later post.
Friday 4 April 2008
Course Meeting 4: Assessment 2 (Role Play Exam)
This time there were only five students - but quite a few visitors from various places, including Högskolan i Jönköping, where a couple of students are doing a project about SL. I'd received apologies for absence from the rest, and we'll have to organise another session for people who missed the Role Play Exam.
There was a bit of technical trouble for one of the students right at the beginning, which is why it was a good idea to start with Outrageous Opinions. By the time we'd got to the end of the exercise he'd fixed his problem with feedback from his mike.
I'd already posted the Role Play Background document on the course web site (and mailed the students about it), but I'd created some visual aids showing the details of the positions of the different characters in the role play, and I went through these in some detail in Peer Gynt first, so that the students could start creating their own mental pictures of what was going to happen. I also took them through the assessment procedure - this is also a way of focussing the students on the task in hand.
The technique I used is one which I've adapted (stolen!) from the RSA CoCom exam (that is, the Royal Society of Arts Communicative Competence Examination). There's an intrinsic problem in examining people's ability to speak English. Set-piece presentations which students can prepare are one important element, but another equally important one is the student's ability to converse in freer, less-structured and less-controlled situations, where spontaneous elements may occur, and which need to be dealt with.
I've been examining spoken English via role play examinations for quite a long time now. I must have participated in the examination of about 2000 students at the Army Technical School in Östersund over a 10-year period (role play and simulation are important elements in military training all over the world). However, during this period, we used the 'standard' CoCom procedure, with a facilitator who participates in the role play itself (hopefully as a silent partner, but also to facilitate the performance of the weaker students in particular) and an examiner who sits outside the role play and observes what goes on.
After the role play the procedure is for the examiner and the facilitator to compare notes, often with the examiner looking at both the 'big picture' (i.e. how the role play went in general) and the fine details (such as grammatical errors), whilst the facilitator reports back on more affective aspects, such as facial expression and tone of voice.
This time around, though, we don't have the resources for both a facilitator and an examiner, and I realised - on the hoof - that there was a minor design fault in the activity: the role of Council Officer was really one for a facilitator, rather than a student … so I made myself into the Council Officer and used my role to facilitate.
There were also problems with the number of students. There are four roles in the role play, but the idea is to be able to ditch one of them, if necessary. This time around it was necessary, so we had a role play with 3 students + facilitator and another with 2 students + facilitator. I asked the students to decide which role they wanted to play before we began dividing them into groups, so that I was able to put together viable groups which consisted of people who'd chosen their function within the group … so it worked well.
Then the students got 10 minutes to go away and prepare (but bear in mind that the preparation lacked one important feature, namely the inputs I would make as facilitator). Then we met up in Yggdrasil and got down to it.
The group of 3 + 1 worked better, in my opinion, than the group of 2 + 1, despite the fact that the latter were probably stronger students when it comes to the ability to speak English … However, everyone did well, with everyone getting between 70% and 80% of the available marks.
I ended the session with a briefing about Assessment 3 (about which more in another post), and the students from Jönköping distributed a questionnaire.
After the session I wrote up my assessment notes and mailed each student with their result, and circulated a mailing list for people to use to choose their partners for Assessment 3. I'll make the podcast later on this morning …
There was a bit of technical trouble for one of the students right at the beginning, which is why it was a good idea to start with Outrageous Opinions. By the time we'd got to the end of the exercise he'd fixed his problem with feedback from his mike.
I'd already posted the Role Play Background document on the course web site (and mailed the students about it), but I'd created some visual aids showing the details of the positions of the different characters in the role play, and I went through these in some detail in Peer Gynt first, so that the students could start creating their own mental pictures of what was going to happen. I also took them through the assessment procedure - this is also a way of focussing the students on the task in hand.
The technique I used is one which I've adapted (stolen!) from the RSA CoCom exam (that is, the Royal Society of Arts Communicative Competence Examination). There's an intrinsic problem in examining people's ability to speak English. Set-piece presentations which students can prepare are one important element, but another equally important one is the student's ability to converse in freer, less-structured and less-controlled situations, where spontaneous elements may occur, and which need to be dealt with.
I've been examining spoken English via role play examinations for quite a long time now. I must have participated in the examination of about 2000 students at the Army Technical School in Östersund over a 10-year period (role play and simulation are important elements in military training all over the world). However, during this period, we used the 'standard' CoCom procedure, with a facilitator who participates in the role play itself (hopefully as a silent partner, but also to facilitate the performance of the weaker students in particular) and an examiner who sits outside the role play and observes what goes on.
After the role play the procedure is for the examiner and the facilitator to compare notes, often with the examiner looking at both the 'big picture' (i.e. how the role play went in general) and the fine details (such as grammatical errors), whilst the facilitator reports back on more affective aspects, such as facial expression and tone of voice.
This time around, though, we don't have the resources for both a facilitator and an examiner, and I realised - on the hoof - that there was a minor design fault in the activity: the role of Council Officer was really one for a facilitator, rather than a student … so I made myself into the Council Officer and used my role to facilitate.
There were also problems with the number of students. There are four roles in the role play, but the idea is to be able to ditch one of them, if necessary. This time around it was necessary, so we had a role play with 3 students + facilitator and another with 2 students + facilitator. I asked the students to decide which role they wanted to play before we began dividing them into groups, so that I was able to put together viable groups which consisted of people who'd chosen their function within the group … so it worked well.
Then the students got 10 minutes to go away and prepare (but bear in mind that the preparation lacked one important feature, namely the inputs I would make as facilitator). Then we met up in Yggdrasil and got down to it.
The group of 3 + 1 worked better, in my opinion, than the group of 2 + 1, despite the fact that the latter were probably stronger students when it comes to the ability to speak English … However, everyone did well, with everyone getting between 70% and 80% of the available marks.
I ended the session with a briefing about Assessment 3 (about which more in another post), and the students from Jönköping distributed a questionnaire.
After the session I wrote up my assessment notes and mailed each student with their result, and circulated a mailing list for people to use to choose their partners for Assessment 3. I'll make the podcast later on this morning …
Getting ready for Meeting 4
The course is flowing quite smoothly now. When students can't make a session, they get in touch and we fix an alternative … just like on any other distance course. There's still plenty of outside distraction, but that's also pretty normal. I have to work on the principle that the best is the enemy of the good all the time anyway, so I'm aiming for something that's good, rather than something that's perfect for this course (besides which, if you've already achieved perfection, what incentive do you have to improve?!).
Once again, the preparations consisted of writing the lesson plan, creating the course visual aids and updating the web site. That process is also getting quicker, although a good deal of the reason for that is that we're on to the assessment part of the course now, so there's less direct teaching that I need to do. I also needed to design a new layout for the course database, so that I had a form I could both print out and write on on the day, and fill in via the keyboard and mail to the students as feedback. This is actually one of the trickier aspects of course design, believe it or not. However, once you've got a visual aid to hang your ideas about the assessment on to, the whole process of carrying out the assessment becomes so much easier.
This time around I decided to start with the 'Outrageous Opinions' exercise we finished with last time - it's really a warm-up for the students and an opportunity to make sure that everyone's up to speed with the technology again.
The assessment this time was Assessment 2, which is the role play exam. I'll describe it in more detail in my next post which is all about what actually happened at Meeting 4.
Then the plan is to finish off with a briefing about Assessment 3, the joint presentation, which takes place at Meeting 5 next week.
Once again, the preparations consisted of writing the lesson plan, creating the course visual aids and updating the web site. That process is also getting quicker, although a good deal of the reason for that is that we're on to the assessment part of the course now, so there's less direct teaching that I need to do. I also needed to design a new layout for the course database, so that I had a form I could both print out and write on on the day, and fill in via the keyboard and mail to the students as feedback. This is actually one of the trickier aspects of course design, believe it or not. However, once you've got a visual aid to hang your ideas about the assessment on to, the whole process of carrying out the assessment becomes so much easier.
This time around I decided to start with the 'Outrageous Opinions' exercise we finished with last time - it's really a warm-up for the students and an opportunity to make sure that everyone's up to speed with the technology again.
The assessment this time was Assessment 2, which is the role play exam. I'll describe it in more detail in my next post which is all about what actually happened at Meeting 4.
Then the plan is to finish off with a briefing about Assessment 3, the joint presentation, which takes place at Meeting 5 next week.
Wednesday 2 April 2008
Assessment 2
I've just made an announcement on the course blog about Assessment 2 which takes place tomorrow evening. This is what I said:
Tomorrow evening we'll be doing Assessment 2, the Role Play exam. The exam itself is about traffic problems and your task will be to come to a decision about how to solve the traffic problems of your town. You'll find a full description of the task on the Traffic Problems worksheet on the Assessment 2 page (in the Business Pages section of the website).
You'll get a mark out of 40 for this task, broken down like this:
Communicative Ability: 25 marks
Fluency: 10 marks
Accuracy: 5 marks
And here's the description from the How to Pass the Course page of what these actually mean:
Communicative ability is your ability to send the message you think you’re sending and to receive the messages other people think they’re sending. You also need to respond to those messages appropriately.
Fluency is the degree to which your language flows - without you losing the thread or searching too long for an appropriate word.
Accuracy covers the same factors in all three types of assessment.
Tomorrow evening I'll be largely observing what you do … but I'll intervene to help you all if your role play is getting stuck. If I do intervene (which might well *not* happen), I won't necessarily talk directly to the person who might need some help. I could just as easily manoeuvre someone else into helping them!
Just as I did with Assessment 1, I'll give you some general feedback immediately after the role play - and send you some more detailed feedback - and a mark - privately afterwards.
Good luck with Assessment 2!
See you on Kamimo at 6.30 pm CET tomorrow evening (Thursday, 3rd April).
Tomorrow evening we'll be doing Assessment 2, the Role Play exam. The exam itself is about traffic problems and your task will be to come to a decision about how to solve the traffic problems of your town. You'll find a full description of the task on the Traffic Problems worksheet on the Assessment 2 page (in the Business Pages section of the website).
You'll get a mark out of 40 for this task, broken down like this:
Communicative Ability: 25 marks
Fluency: 10 marks
Accuracy: 5 marks
And here's the description from the How to Pass the Course page of what these actually mean:
Communicative ability is your ability to send the message you think you’re sending and to receive the messages other people think they’re sending. You also need to respond to those messages appropriately.
Fluency is the degree to which your language flows - without you losing the thread or searching too long for an appropriate word.
Accuracy covers the same factors in all three types of assessment.
Tomorrow evening I'll be largely observing what you do … but I'll intervene to help you all if your role play is getting stuck. If I do intervene (which might well *not* happen), I won't necessarily talk directly to the person who might need some help. I could just as easily manoeuvre someone else into helping them!
Just as I did with Assessment 1, I'll give you some general feedback immediately after the role play - and send you some more detailed feedback - and a mark - privately afterwards.
Good luck with Assessment 2!
See you on Kamimo at 6.30 pm CET tomorrow evening (Thursday, 3rd April).
Wednesday 26 March 2008
An extra Meeting 3
We've just had an extra Meeting 3, where three students who couldn't make it last week turned up and gave their presentations. They all did reasonably well, and I managed to get their feedback to them the same evening. The whole process took about an hour, and I only did the three presentations.
This is par for the course for this kind of course - there's always someone who can't make it at the same time as everyone else, so you just have to have a sufficiently flexible schedule to allow for times like this one.
This is par for the course for this kind of course - there's always someone who can't make it at the same time as everyone else, so you just have to have a sufficiently flexible schedule to allow for times like this one.
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Assessment 1 at Course Meeting 3
There were fewer students present this time around … but I don't think they were frightened off by the assessment! I'd heard from three of them that circumstance prevented their attending, and I'm going to organise a new meeting next week for those that had to miss the meeting.
Most of the activity was concentrated on the presentations themselves (you can read about the formalities of that on the How to Pass! page within the Business Pages section of the course web site. These assessments pose something of a lesson-planning problem, since you have to give each student enough time to present, to ask questions and to receive feedback. Everyone who presented exceeded the limit of 5 minutes by about 30 seconds (they were very regular!), and each 'package' (of presentation and feedback) took about 10 minutes in all. That means that a group of 24 students would need the entire two hours in order to present.
As it was, we started with a warm-up, and finished with some practice for the role play exam next time around, so you would realistically need 2.5 hours to assess 24 students.
This assessment process makes very high demands on the teacher. You have to be fully concentrated all the time, and be able to give both instant and detailed feedback, whilst managing to record everything, and avoiding making statements to the students which bring them down, rather than lifting them up! Who says men don't have simultaneous capacity! I prepared a new layout on the course database (and upgraded it this morning), to make my marking clearer both to me and to the students. I showed everyone a copy of my marksheet before they began.
This morning I added a field for my detailed comments, and so was able to generate a .pdf document for each student with her mark and my comment on it. I refrained from giving numerical marks publicly yesterday evening. This is an ethical question for me: specific judgements should be made privately, in my opinion, although making more general statements about how I felt they did is part of my public job.
I haven't heard yet what the students think about my marking and feedback … but I daresay I will soon!
One magic moment last night was when one of the students let us all know where she was in real life last night. She usually logs in from her office just across the yard from where I sit … but last night she was at her sister's house just outside Tel-Aviv in Israel! We wouldn't have know if she hadn't told us …
Most of the activity was concentrated on the presentations themselves (you can read about the formalities of that on the How to Pass! page within the Business Pages section of the course web site. These assessments pose something of a lesson-planning problem, since you have to give each student enough time to present, to ask questions and to receive feedback. Everyone who presented exceeded the limit of 5 minutes by about 30 seconds (they were very regular!), and each 'package' (of presentation and feedback) took about 10 minutes in all. That means that a group of 24 students would need the entire two hours in order to present.
As it was, we started with a warm-up, and finished with some practice for the role play exam next time around, so you would realistically need 2.5 hours to assess 24 students.
This assessment process makes very high demands on the teacher. You have to be fully concentrated all the time, and be able to give both instant and detailed feedback, whilst managing to record everything, and avoiding making statements to the students which bring them down, rather than lifting them up! Who says men don't have simultaneous capacity! I prepared a new layout on the course database (and upgraded it this morning), to make my marking clearer both to me and to the students. I showed everyone a copy of my marksheet before they began.
This morning I added a field for my detailed comments, and so was able to generate a .pdf document for each student with her mark and my comment on it. I refrained from giving numerical marks publicly yesterday evening. This is an ethical question for me: specific judgements should be made privately, in my opinion, although making more general statements about how I felt they did is part of my public job.
I haven't heard yet what the students think about my marking and feedback … but I daresay I will soon!
One magic moment last night was when one of the students let us all know where she was in real life last night. She usually logs in from her office just across the yard from where I sit … but last night she was at her sister's house just outside Tel-Aviv in Israel! We wouldn't have know if she hadn't told us …
Thursday 13 March 2008
Getting ready for Assessment 1
Once again, things have been really hectic since I last had a chance to give the Oral Production course some attention (I've just given feedback on about 55 Business Writing Warm-Ups …). However, things have been fairly quiet on that front too. I've been contacted by one worried student who wanted to know when the extra Assessment 1 material would be put out on the web site … and now, finally, it is.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
What I've done today is to construct a page of hints and tips about making presentations (which is what Assessment 1 is all about), make a blog entry on the course blog and a podcast which is now out on the podcast site.
What happens next is that I plan the lesson in detail. One of the tasks I have is planning the activities for the people who aren't making presentations at a given moment, and another is creating a well-balanced lesson which doesn't *only* deal with presentations.
The assessment is going to need to be handled sensitively too. I feel that it's important that feedback is given individually and privately when you're allocating marks to people, but, on the other hand, both the presenter and the listeners want some kind of indication from me of what I thought of it. I don't think there's an instruction manual for this kind of teacher activity - I'll have to rely on my experience …
I've also got a couple of role plays to get out on the course web site: a practice one for Course Meeting 3 and the exam one for Course Meeting 4.
Friday 29 February 2008
Course Meeting 2: Thursday, 28th February
We had seven students present, and were joined by one of the US buddies later on in the session. The lesson plan is out on the course web site (Meeting 2 link), together with a couple of pages about the different activities we completed.
We started in Peer Gynt with a run-through of the evening's activities: Picking out the Porkies, practice presentations & a practice role play. I also took the students through the marking criteria for Assessments 1 & 2 (take a look at the Business Pages section of the course web site) as a preparation for the evening's activities.
Then we moved over to the campfire, where I told them tall stories of my experience as a teacher, slipping in one outright lie. The actual task for the students was to practise interjecting comments and questions of their own, but they also had fun trying to work out which one was the lie (they failed miserably!). You can read which stories I told in the Meeting 2 section of the course web site.
The next activity was for the students to present their experiences on SL to each other (in one group of 3 and another of 4). Then they had to produce a summary to present at plenary session. One group stayed around the campfire, whilst the other moved to Yggrasil, where they could sit around a table (I haven't worked out how to send the tables up into the air yet!). That way, they didn't disturb each other whilst they spoke … but they were sufficiently close to each other not to waste time when they met up again.
I learned a new technique for monitoring: at the campfire I hovered in the air above them, and was thus able to hear, without being an obtrusive presence; at Yggrasil it was even more fun, since I could stand on the canopy and hear without being seen at all! In general the technology worked even better this time - no-one had any technical problems, and we're working out an etiquette of turning off your mike when you're not actually talking (so we hear less about the domestic arrangements of the students as we work!).
The last activity was the first practice role play: Poisoning the pigeons in the park (thanks to Tom Lehrer!). You can read about the situation on the course web site. Once again, they worked in two groups. I briefed everyone in Peer Gynt before we got going and allocated people to roles.
We used Yggrasil again, and I sent the first group off there first to get themselves sat down and prepare for the activity. Derek had turned up by this time and followed what we did with great interest. We used the convention that the active participants sat down, whilst the observers remained standing, and concentrated their attention on the inputs of the person who was playing the same role as themselves.
The first group were very combative and communicative - but not so good at using the right kind of social discourse language. Derek gave his feedback too about how he experienced the tone of their conversation - and he said all the right things about needing more 'lubrication' to avoid insulting people. I gave the observers (students) the opportunity to give feedback first and then I gave my overall feedback.
The second group was then very subdued, and incredibly polite and careful with each other! Perfect! It gave me the opportunity to talk about calibrating your language properly (we're going to need a session about this next time).
After I signed off, some of the students carried on with individual sessions with their US buddies. I recorded the podcast, made an electronic copy of 'what you said …' and amended the web pages (which I'd managed to put on line only just before Meeting 2).
Things get a bit more relaxing now, so I'm hoping that everything will be up to date in good time for next time (when I'm actually going to be allocating marks to Assessment 1 and giving feedback …).
We started in Peer Gynt with a run-through of the evening's activities: Picking out the Porkies, practice presentations & a practice role play. I also took the students through the marking criteria for Assessments 1 & 2 (take a look at the Business Pages section of the course web site) as a preparation for the evening's activities.
Then we moved over to the campfire, where I told them tall stories of my experience as a teacher, slipping in one outright lie. The actual task for the students was to practise interjecting comments and questions of their own, but they also had fun trying to work out which one was the lie (they failed miserably!). You can read which stories I told in the Meeting 2 section of the course web site.
The next activity was for the students to present their experiences on SL to each other (in one group of 3 and another of 4). Then they had to produce a summary to present at plenary session. One group stayed around the campfire, whilst the other moved to Yggrasil, where they could sit around a table (I haven't worked out how to send the tables up into the air yet!). That way, they didn't disturb each other whilst they spoke … but they were sufficiently close to each other not to waste time when they met up again.
I learned a new technique for monitoring: at the campfire I hovered in the air above them, and was thus able to hear, without being an obtrusive presence; at Yggrasil it was even more fun, since I could stand on the canopy and hear without being seen at all! In general the technology worked even better this time - no-one had any technical problems, and we're working out an etiquette of turning off your mike when you're not actually talking (so we hear less about the domestic arrangements of the students as we work!).
The last activity was the first practice role play: Poisoning the pigeons in the park (thanks to Tom Lehrer!). You can read about the situation on the course web site. Once again, they worked in two groups. I briefed everyone in Peer Gynt before we got going and allocated people to roles.
We used Yggrasil again, and I sent the first group off there first to get themselves sat down and prepare for the activity. Derek had turned up by this time and followed what we did with great interest. We used the convention that the active participants sat down, whilst the observers remained standing, and concentrated their attention on the inputs of the person who was playing the same role as themselves.
The first group were very combative and communicative - but not so good at using the right kind of social discourse language. Derek gave his feedback too about how he experienced the tone of their conversation - and he said all the right things about needing more 'lubrication' to avoid insulting people. I gave the observers (students) the opportunity to give feedback first and then I gave my overall feedback.
The second group was then very subdued, and incredibly polite and careful with each other! Perfect! It gave me the opportunity to talk about calibrating your language properly (we're going to need a session about this next time).
After I signed off, some of the students carried on with individual sessions with their US buddies. I recorded the podcast, made an electronic copy of 'what you said …' and amended the web pages (which I'd managed to put on line only just before Meeting 2).
Things get a bit more relaxing now, so I'm hoping that everything will be up to date in good time for next time (when I'm actually going to be allocating marks to Assessment 1 and giving feedback …).
What's been going on since Course Meeting 1
The brief answer is: I've been busy! However, the Oral Production course has also been fairly quiet, as the students have been busy getting together with their US counterparts, and exploring SL.
The student in Estonia has run into a common problem: her working schedule has changed and Thursday evenings are now difficult to impossible for her. The question, then, was: can I still study the course? My answer was 'yes' - it'll cause me a little bit of inconvenience, but I'm sure I can rustle up a small group of students who can converse with her at other times than the ones in the schedule.
Two people had problems getting in touch with their buddies, but I managed to liaise with Bryan about this and put people into contact with each other.
I've also been booked to present 'cross-cultural communication' on the OP course at a conference in London on 15th March. I'm going to use Adobe Connect (since I haven't got time to go over to London for the weekend), and I've booked Luisa Panichi (Pisa) and Bryan Carter (Missouri) for an iChat AV three-way recorded video chat about how their students have experienced the various contacts. This'll be available as a Quicktime movie file, if anyone's interested.
My next post will be all about Course Meeting 2.
The student in Estonia has run into a common problem: her working schedule has changed and Thursday evenings are now difficult to impossible for her. The question, then, was: can I still study the course? My answer was 'yes' - it'll cause me a little bit of inconvenience, but I'm sure I can rustle up a small group of students who can converse with her at other times than the ones in the schedule.
Two people had problems getting in touch with their buddies, but I managed to liaise with Bryan about this and put people into contact with each other.
I've also been booked to present 'cross-cultural communication' on the OP course at a conference in London on 15th March. I'm going to use Adobe Connect (since I haven't got time to go over to London for the weekend), and I've booked Luisa Panichi (Pisa) and Bryan Carter (Missouri) for an iChat AV three-way recorded video chat about how their students have experienced the various contacts. This'll be available as a Quicktime movie file, if anyone's interested.
My next post will be all about Course Meeting 2.
Friday 15 February 2008
Lessons learned from Course Meeting 1
• Course information needs to be both more and less specific. I don't think that many students have read (and/or remembered) either the Welcome letter or the Business Pages on the course web site. This doesn't mean 'abandon them', but rather 'take steps to ensure that the right information gets to the students at the right time'. Too much info too soon is a waste of time, but it's difficult to know in advance how much 'too much' is.
• I need to be both clearer in my instructions about 'micro-level' tasks, and more disciplined about timing and outcomes. There seemed to be very little 'what does he want us to do?' yesterday, but I want there to be none. This is a disruptive environment for instruction-giving (which is why it's so useful for its present purpose), so that requires me to be absolutely tight in my planning and execution … paradoxically, that's the only way I can retain the chance to be flexible!
• I need to explore the group room area on Kamimo. I don't actually know how it works right now - but I'll learn before next session on 28th February. This may well remove the problem that students don't move sufficiently far away from each other when they break up into small groups, so they disturb each other's discussions. I'll get on to Judith today to book a time when she can teach me.
• The environment really came alive last night. Several people mentioned spontaneously how much more fun Kamimo is than most of the other places they've visited in world. I suspect that one major factor is Design Container's and the Kamimo team's (but not my!) sterling work in designing the environment. Another is probably the 'magic' of being able to just talk to people in a natural way, despite their being in completely different geographical locations.
• I started addressing people by their avatar names, rather than their real names yesterday …
• Keynote is a great programme for making visuals to go on the whiteboard. I exported my presentation as .jpg (having first learned not to fill the screen too much, since the Kamimo whiteboard is both narrow and shorter than a Keynote screen), and then uploaded them to my Textures folder. This costs L$10 per .jpg.
• I need to be both clearer in my instructions about 'micro-level' tasks, and more disciplined about timing and outcomes. There seemed to be very little 'what does he want us to do?' yesterday, but I want there to be none. This is a disruptive environment for instruction-giving (which is why it's so useful for its present purpose), so that requires me to be absolutely tight in my planning and execution … paradoxically, that's the only way I can retain the chance to be flexible!
• I need to explore the group room area on Kamimo. I don't actually know how it works right now - but I'll learn before next session on 28th February. This may well remove the problem that students don't move sufficiently far away from each other when they break up into small groups, so they disturb each other's discussions. I'll get on to Judith today to book a time when she can teach me.
• The environment really came alive last night. Several people mentioned spontaneously how much more fun Kamimo is than most of the other places they've visited in world. I suspect that one major factor is Design Container's and the Kamimo team's (but not my!) sterling work in designing the environment. Another is probably the 'magic' of being able to just talk to people in a natural way, despite their being in completely different geographical locations.
• I started addressing people by their avatar names, rather than their real names yesterday …
• Keynote is a great programme for making visuals to go on the whiteboard. I exported my presentation as .jpg (having first learned not to fill the screen too much, since the Kamimo whiteboard is both narrow and shorter than a Keynote screen), and then uploaded them to my Textures folder. This costs L$10 per .jpg.
Course Meeting 1
Dr Samuel Johnson once used this simile of a dog walking on its hind legs (to illustrate some sexist point or other):"… It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." I didn't feel that my teaching was at its best yesterday evening when we had our first proper teaching session on Kamimo … but I think the students got by very well.
There are still uncertainties in the exact class list. One student popped up out of nowhere at about 4.00 pm yesterday (there have clearly been some problems with the on-line application procedure) and turned up quite out of the blue about halfway through the lesson. Another student appeared late too, with the voices of his kids coming across loud and clear! However, this is about par for the course with an ICT-based distance course - the administrative procedures surrounding them are still back in the dark ages.
I can see, though, that students are going to need a touch more specific instruction about setting sound levels, etc. Not much, but some. I gave two of the participants last night on-the-hoof instructions about how to get voice chat going, and it worked fine, but I could equally well have directed them to a web page in advance with the same instructions on it.
We followed the lesson planning more or less exactly. There were just two activities which switched places (breaking in and active listening). I also demanded less of the students when it came to making their own presentations, but concentrated instead on getting them used to the environment, and getting used to the idea that there is a different pattern of social interaction in English when it comes to listening and speaking in more informal groups.
The video recording worked fairly well. SnapzPro also behaved itself, but I restricted each recording to just over 10 minutes to create smaller file sizes. Then it took at least 10 minutes for each Quicktime movie to be processed and saved. The net result was that I managed to make four files of about 12 minutes each during a 120-minute lesson (i.e. not quite half). I'll experiment with SnapzPro when I'm off line to see what happens when you make a two-hour recording (I suspect that it's not going to work, since 12 minutes = 1.2GB).
I used my 'on-line lessons' kitchen timer to make sure I kept to my times too - it's very easy to lose track of time when you're on line.
I'll make another post about lessons learned.
There are still uncertainties in the exact class list. One student popped up out of nowhere at about 4.00 pm yesterday (there have clearly been some problems with the on-line application procedure) and turned up quite out of the blue about halfway through the lesson. Another student appeared late too, with the voices of his kids coming across loud and clear! However, this is about par for the course with an ICT-based distance course - the administrative procedures surrounding them are still back in the dark ages.
I can see, though, that students are going to need a touch more specific instruction about setting sound levels, etc. Not much, but some. I gave two of the participants last night on-the-hoof instructions about how to get voice chat going, and it worked fine, but I could equally well have directed them to a web page in advance with the same instructions on it.
We followed the lesson planning more or less exactly. There were just two activities which switched places (breaking in and active listening). I also demanded less of the students when it came to making their own presentations, but concentrated instead on getting them used to the environment, and getting used to the idea that there is a different pattern of social interaction in English when it comes to listening and speaking in more informal groups.
The video recording worked fairly well. SnapzPro also behaved itself, but I restricted each recording to just over 10 minutes to create smaller file sizes. Then it took at least 10 minutes for each Quicktime movie to be processed and saved. The net result was that I managed to make four files of about 12 minutes each during a 120-minute lesson (i.e. not quite half). I'll experiment with SnapzPro when I'm off line to see what happens when you make a two-hour recording (I suspect that it's not going to work, since 12 minutes = 1.2GB).
I used my 'on-line lessons' kitchen timer to make sure I kept to my times too - it's very easy to lose track of time when you're on line.
I'll make another post about lessons learned.
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Course Launch Mark 2
Students from Partille and Molde turned up (but not my student from Lund). The Snapz Pro recording seemed to work this time, and both students managed to get their audio chat to work in the end.
Then there was an interesting diversion: a Canadian from Montreal turned up, who only spoke French! I ended up putting her in the dragonfly, so that she could take a look around … This is one of those 'etiquette' problems we'll have to deal with …
Then there was an interesting diversion: a Canadian from Montreal turned up, who only spoke French! I ended up putting her in the dragonfly, so that she could take a look around … This is one of those 'etiquette' problems we'll have to deal with …
Today's (and yesterday's) contacts
Yesterday I had a call from one of the students. She lives in Lund, and has actually already studied 37.5hp with me - without me every having met her! She was having problems accessing SL, so we went through the possible problems: has she downloaded the program; has she installed it; are the preferences correctly set? We tried to meet on Kamimo, but failed. (She actually got the message twisted - we were supposed to meet today, not yesterday). The program crashed when she tried to open it … which is an indication that she might not be using the right computer! I referred her to Bryan's slide show (on the podcasts site) and gave her a bit of advice about limiting the use of her RAM. Sounds like she's going to have terminal problems … but this afternoon will tell all!
Alexandra dropped by with some video tapes and we managed to get her reimbursed in cash!
Alexandra dropped by with some video tapes and we managed to get her reimbursed in cash!
Monday 11 February 2008
What happened on Course Launch Day
Starting a new course is always a stressful experience - and this one even more so. Ole Victor and Alexandra came by to set up the video camera, and I'd downloaded and tested SnapzPro for recording screenshots.
The students were to arrive in three groups, which were coordinated to arrive when the US students were free. Bryan had a group which finished at 9.15 am, so the first group came along at 4.00 pm CET (9.00 am CST). I was in world at 3.35 pm, and met up with the early-birds at about 3.45. When people turned up, everything worked fine. Ingrid Linnas came along from Estonia, and had a couple of problems with the first computer she tried. However, I did a workshop at her university in March, so I was able to direct her to the technician she needed to solve her problem! Ingrid's going to cause me a few administrative problems too, since the on-line application procedure hasn't worked for her. The other participants were Swedes and I asked my check questions (e.g. what's the name of the unit at Kalmar you work in, what's your post-code, etc). I quickly gave the first group a tour of the facilities, made sure they knew what they had to do before next time … and matched them up with Americans.
Then we had a break until the next group turned up at 4.45 pm our time (9.45 CST). I had a couple of technical jobs to do: change the video tape in the camera, and save the SnapzPro file. The first one went fine … but the last proved to be a major problem. The conversion to a QuickTime movie was a really big job, and it wasn't anywhere near finished by the time the next group turned up. The save process slowed my computer down considerably, so I got as far as the introduction to the island, and then I had to restart my computer and come back … Fortunately, Bryan was around and he took over, matching Europeans to Americans. By the time I got back, the interaction was fully underway, so I flitted from pair to pair, making sure that everyone knew what they were going to do.
The third group were scheduled to come at 5.15, but the students weren't following the schedule … and most of them had already turned up! There was only Birgithe from Molde who turned up, and she studied the pilot course in the autumn, so she didn't need a tour of the island. Her buddies were both the people who'd had technical problems, so I matched Birgithe up with a US counterpart and made an arrangement for us to do this again on Wednesday, 13th.
My overall impression was that things went well. Students now seem to know what they're doing, and to have gained a familiarity with the basic tools and functions. I've mailed them all and turned Bryan's technical tips into a video podcast which was published on Friday. Today I'm theoretically free, so I'll update the Course Blog, fill up the web site, and make a Course Launch podcast tomorrow when I get back to the office.
The students were to arrive in three groups, which were coordinated to arrive when the US students were free. Bryan had a group which finished at 9.15 am, so the first group came along at 4.00 pm CET (9.00 am CST). I was in world at 3.35 pm, and met up with the early-birds at about 3.45. When people turned up, everything worked fine. Ingrid Linnas came along from Estonia, and had a couple of problems with the first computer she tried. However, I did a workshop at her university in March, so I was able to direct her to the technician she needed to solve her problem! Ingrid's going to cause me a few administrative problems too, since the on-line application procedure hasn't worked for her. The other participants were Swedes and I asked my check questions (e.g. what's the name of the unit at Kalmar you work in, what's your post-code, etc). I quickly gave the first group a tour of the facilities, made sure they knew what they had to do before next time … and matched them up with Americans.
Then we had a break until the next group turned up at 4.45 pm our time (9.45 CST). I had a couple of technical jobs to do: change the video tape in the camera, and save the SnapzPro file. The first one went fine … but the last proved to be a major problem. The conversion to a QuickTime movie was a really big job, and it wasn't anywhere near finished by the time the next group turned up. The save process slowed my computer down considerably, so I got as far as the introduction to the island, and then I had to restart my computer and come back … Fortunately, Bryan was around and he took over, matching Europeans to Americans. By the time I got back, the interaction was fully underway, so I flitted from pair to pair, making sure that everyone knew what they were going to do.
The third group were scheduled to come at 5.15, but the students weren't following the schedule … and most of them had already turned up! There was only Birgithe from Molde who turned up, and she studied the pilot course in the autumn, so she didn't need a tour of the island. Her buddies were both the people who'd had technical problems, so I matched Birgithe up with a US counterpart and made an arrangement for us to do this again on Wednesday, 13th.
My overall impression was that things went well. Students now seem to know what they're doing, and to have gained a familiarity with the basic tools and functions. I've mailed them all and turned Bryan's technical tips into a video podcast which was published on Friday. Today I'm theoretically free, so I'll update the Course Blog, fill up the web site, and make a Course Launch podcast tomorrow when I get back to the office.
The more 'technical' post about the course design
It's a sign of generally busy an 'adjunkt' is that it's taken me until this day off to get round to writing about last Thursday's Course Launch in more detail. Since the launch of Oral Production, I've used Adobe Connect live for the first time, and started two new courses, each with 30+ students on it, one via Marratech from Kalmar and one in Sävsjö.
Back to OP … The first thing to do was to get the web site updated. As usual, it was the administrative side that needed doing first, so I defined the three course assignments in great detail. This covers both what the students have to do, and the number of marks they can achieve for each assignment, and for each aspect of each assignment. This is probably the most difficult and the most important aspect of designing an on-line course. You have a number of different factors to take into account, such as what the syllabus says, what the student work-load looks like, and the dynamic quality of the course. What this last factor involves is trying to keep the students excited to continue! And making sure that the rewards they get for continuing are proportionate to the amount of work they have to do.
Once you know what you expect of them, it's then relatively straightforward to design the actual lessons and supporting course materials. You've got the actual goals of the course clearly set, so working out how to get there is a lot easier. On this course there's an added complication in that I've never worked in this environment before, so I'm not quite sure yet how much ground we can cover at each meeting. Thus, I'm not designing more than one meeting at a time (although the fact that I need to give the students their assignments for next time too defines at least part of the following meeting).
The first meeting is going to be about polite language, the language of interaction, and a chance to practise presentation skills. I wrote a detailed lesson plan, breaking down the lesson into 10 and 15 minute sections. This lesson plan is now out on the course web site too, and I've invited the students to take a look at it before we have our next meeting. In one respect, this is a little foolhardy, since I have no real means of knowing whether the lesson plan is going to work. In another, though, it's a sensible course of action, since, if I involve my students in the entire work on the course, there's a much better chance that a) they'll understand why they need to do the 'inter-meeting' work I'm asking them to do and b) that they'll be tolerant of minor over-runs and glitches.
The intellectual model I'm using for creating course materials is, of course, my experiences of face-to-face (f2f) sessions. At the moment, I'm regarding SL as just another environment for f2f teaching. When we meet this Thursday, the main student-directed activity is going to be the report back from their experiences with the US students and on their own in SL. My plan is to run this like a kind of marketplace, where students set up 'stalls' from which they tell small groups of other students about what they've experienced. I'll be going from group to group to help out (and see if there are any interesting language points to take up).
Back to OP … The first thing to do was to get the web site updated. As usual, it was the administrative side that needed doing first, so I defined the three course assignments in great detail. This covers both what the students have to do, and the number of marks they can achieve for each assignment, and for each aspect of each assignment. This is probably the most difficult and the most important aspect of designing an on-line course. You have a number of different factors to take into account, such as what the syllabus says, what the student work-load looks like, and the dynamic quality of the course. What this last factor involves is trying to keep the students excited to continue! And making sure that the rewards they get for continuing are proportionate to the amount of work they have to do.
Once you know what you expect of them, it's then relatively straightforward to design the actual lessons and supporting course materials. You've got the actual goals of the course clearly set, so working out how to get there is a lot easier. On this course there's an added complication in that I've never worked in this environment before, so I'm not quite sure yet how much ground we can cover at each meeting. Thus, I'm not designing more than one meeting at a time (although the fact that I need to give the students their assignments for next time too defines at least part of the following meeting).
The first meeting is going to be about polite language, the language of interaction, and a chance to practise presentation skills. I wrote a detailed lesson plan, breaking down the lesson into 10 and 15 minute sections. This lesson plan is now out on the course web site too, and I've invited the students to take a look at it before we have our next meeting. In one respect, this is a little foolhardy, since I have no real means of knowing whether the lesson plan is going to work. In another, though, it's a sensible course of action, since, if I involve my students in the entire work on the course, there's a much better chance that a) they'll understand why they need to do the 'inter-meeting' work I'm asking them to do and b) that they'll be tolerant of minor over-runs and glitches.
The intellectual model I'm using for creating course materials is, of course, my experiences of face-to-face (f2f) sessions. At the moment, I'm regarding SL as just another environment for f2f teaching. When we meet this Thursday, the main student-directed activity is going to be the report back from their experiences with the US students and on their own in SL. My plan is to run this like a kind of marketplace, where students set up 'stalls' from which they tell small groups of other students about what they've experienced. I'll be going from group to group to help out (and see if there are any interesting language points to take up).
Friday 8 February 2008
Course Launch: sense impressions
Good grief! (OK, I've got it out now!)
I'm going to record my subjective impressions here, and then post again later with a more 'technical' post about how things went.
Well … being a teacher was like playing a complicated piece on a church organ, whilst baking a cake and working out a chess problem in your head! It was fun, though.
Firstly, a big 'thank you' to Dr Bryan Carter and his students from Missouri. My computer started playing up as the second group of students arrived, but Bryan took over smoothly and assigned his students to my students.
It was like being at a large and noisy cocktail party at times, but I knew that my teaching style would have to be very direct and clear in this environment (at least when I'm actually teaching). It made me think of the greater discipline an abstract painter needs, compared with someone who paints conventionally and has all the forms and rules to lean on. I like abstract better myself, though I can imagine how disruptive and frightening this environment could feel like for a teacher who's used to leaning on a lectern and just lecturing.
I *think* that everyone got on OK, though I've got a couple of 'reassuring' mails to write today to people who had different degrees of technical difficulties. What I felt happened was that people became very quickly at ease in the environment - and started hanging out with each other, just as they do in RL. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
OK, breakfast time now - and another busy day.
I'm going to record my subjective impressions here, and then post again later with a more 'technical' post about how things went.
Well … being a teacher was like playing a complicated piece on a church organ, whilst baking a cake and working out a chess problem in your head! It was fun, though.
Firstly, a big 'thank you' to Dr Bryan Carter and his students from Missouri. My computer started playing up as the second group of students arrived, but Bryan took over smoothly and assigned his students to my students.
It was like being at a large and noisy cocktail party at times, but I knew that my teaching style would have to be very direct and clear in this environment (at least when I'm actually teaching). It made me think of the greater discipline an abstract painter needs, compared with someone who paints conventionally and has all the forms and rules to lean on. I like abstract better myself, though I can imagine how disruptive and frightening this environment could feel like for a teacher who's used to leaning on a lectern and just lecturing.
I *think* that everyone got on OK, though I've got a couple of 'reassuring' mails to write today to people who had different degrees of technical difficulties. What I felt happened was that people became very quickly at ease in the environment - and started hanging out with each other, just as they do in RL. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
OK, breakfast time now - and another busy day.
Catching up on the news
Yesterday was Course Launch day, and I'll make a more detailed post about that later. Right now, I'll just record what's happened since I last posted.
There's been another drop-out (the student in question is already studying 15hp with me on other courses, and she feels she doesn't have time for this too). It's cut one of the time zones out, though!
I've also had a couple of interesting conversations with colleagues about the course (some of whom are actually on the course), mostly about the affective aspects of what we're doing. I'm really going out on a limb with this course on a personal level too. We teachers almost never do our work in the presence of other experts (i.e. other teachers), unlike just about every other job and profession there is. We can sit at meetings and pontificate, but it's a whole other experience having your colleagues seeing you through the eyes of a student! Their feedback is going to be very interesting - and very important. It extends the Johari window of personal development into the area of things I don't know about myself, but others do.
This is undoubtedly going to put extra stress on me as a teacher … but I think I can cope!
Apart from that, this is the week from Hell. I started 54 students on an on-line course the day before, and rushed almost straight from this Course Launch into my first live session with Adobe Connect. Still, things will calm down soon, and I'll be able to get on with the more relaxed contact with students next week.
There's been another drop-out (the student in question is already studying 15hp with me on other courses, and she feels she doesn't have time for this too). It's cut one of the time zones out, though!
I've also had a couple of interesting conversations with colleagues about the course (some of whom are actually on the course), mostly about the affective aspects of what we're doing. I'm really going out on a limb with this course on a personal level too. We teachers almost never do our work in the presence of other experts (i.e. other teachers), unlike just about every other job and profession there is. We can sit at meetings and pontificate, but it's a whole other experience having your colleagues seeing you through the eyes of a student! Their feedback is going to be very interesting - and very important. It extends the Johari window of personal development into the area of things I don't know about myself, but others do.
This is undoubtedly going to put extra stress on me as a teacher … but I think I can cope!
Apart from that, this is the week from Hell. I started 54 students on an on-line course the day before, and rushed almost straight from this Course Launch into my first live session with Adobe Connect. Still, things will calm down soon, and I'll be able to get on with the more relaxed contact with students next week.
Wednesday 6 February 2008
Pre-course start mail to students
I've just mailed the students to remind them about what happens at course start and to introduce them to the researchers.
Had an interesting conversation with Peter Carlsson at lunchtime. Peter's advice was to make it clear that this is an experimental course - he felt that students would be more tolerant of minor problems that way. I was going to mail people today anyway, but I incorporated his suggestions into the 'final' mail before course start:
Dear All,
We're getting the course underway tomorrow, starting at 4 pm. If you don't know exactly what time you're due on Kamimo Island, just get in touch.
I'm quite excited about the course start - so far as we know, no university in Sweden has ever run an entire 'conventional' course in Second Life before (those few places that have worked in Second Life so far have tended to run certain exercises in world, but not whole courses).
However, ground-breaking does have certain risks associated with it! One factor we know little about is how *your* computers are going to cope with SL, for example. So, bear with me as we start working on the course. If things go wrong (like the program freezing or you getting lost!), just re-start and re-join us. I'll be on Kamimo Island more or less the whole course.
Here are a couple of things you can do to 'find yourself' again:
1. When you arrive on Kamimo Island for the first time (via the course web site?), go to Create Landmark Here (World menu at the top of the screen).
2. If you get lost, open your Inventory (blue button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen) and open your Landmarks folder. You should see the link to Kamimo. If you double-click it, a box opens which invites you to teleport there.
3. Click on the Search button (blue - about in the middle of the screen). Click on the People tab and type my avatar's name in (Davric Rinkitink). You'll then be able to send me a message (IM) from wherever you are, and I can send you an invitation to teleport over to Kamimo.
-------
This is what's going to happen tomorrow (a reminder, just in case my other mails had disappeared!):
1. You turn up at the time stated against your name on the Course Launch Schedule.
2. I'll be taking the first three people to arrive for a quick tour of the facilities, during which time I'll check you off against my list of students. I'll also make sure that you know what you have to do before Course Meeting 1 on 14th February.
3. One (or perhaps more) of the American students will be there, and he or she will take over after I've finished. They will either take you directly to one of their favourite spots in world, or will fix a time with you when you can all go together. They have some questions to ask you about the place(s) you visit, and you'll be preparing a presentation about it(them) to be delivered at Course Meeting 1.
4. Then I'll take the next two or three people through the same procedure as the first group!
-------
The novelty of this course has also attracted the attention of some researchers into the whole phenomenon of education in SL. Alexandra Petrakou is a doctoral student here in Kalmar (at the department called IKD in Swedish) and she has a number of requests to make of you during the course (none of which are going to take an enormous amount of your time …). Luisa Panichi is a teacher and researcher at the University of Pisa in Italy, and she'd also like to hear about your experiences. Finally, you might even hear from a researcher in Missouri called Naomi Baldwin.
The researchers realise, of course, that you're only studying part-time (i.e. that you've got lives as well!), but they'll be very grateful indeed for any feedback you can give.
I'll send you another mail tomorrow detailing the specific requests the researchers are making. The documents they have produced will also be downloadable from the Business Pages section of the course web site.
-------
That's all for now - see you on Kamimo tomorrow afternoon.
Had an interesting conversation with Peter Carlsson at lunchtime. Peter's advice was to make it clear that this is an experimental course - he felt that students would be more tolerant of minor problems that way. I was going to mail people today anyway, but I incorporated his suggestions into the 'final' mail before course start:
Dear All,
We're getting the course underway tomorrow, starting at 4 pm. If you don't know exactly what time you're due on Kamimo Island, just get in touch.
I'm quite excited about the course start - so far as we know, no university in Sweden has ever run an entire 'conventional' course in Second Life before (those few places that have worked in Second Life so far have tended to run certain exercises in world, but not whole courses).
However, ground-breaking does have certain risks associated with it! One factor we know little about is how *your* computers are going to cope with SL, for example. So, bear with me as we start working on the course. If things go wrong (like the program freezing or you getting lost!), just re-start and re-join us. I'll be on Kamimo Island more or less the whole course.
Here are a couple of things you can do to 'find yourself' again:
1. When you arrive on Kamimo Island for the first time (via the course web site?), go to Create Landmark Here (World menu at the top of the screen).
2. If you get lost, open your Inventory (blue button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen) and open your Landmarks folder. You should see the link to Kamimo. If you double-click it, a box opens which invites you to teleport there.
3. Click on the Search button (blue - about in the middle of the screen). Click on the People tab and type my avatar's name in (Davric Rinkitink). You'll then be able to send me a message (IM) from wherever you are, and I can send you an invitation to teleport over to Kamimo.
-------
This is what's going to happen tomorrow (a reminder, just in case my other mails had disappeared!):
1. You turn up at the time stated against your name on the Course Launch Schedule.
2. I'll be taking the first three people to arrive for a quick tour of the facilities, during which time I'll check you off against my list of students. I'll also make sure that you know what you have to do before Course Meeting 1 on 14th February.
3. One (or perhaps more) of the American students will be there, and he or she will take over after I've finished. They will either take you directly to one of their favourite spots in world, or will fix a time with you when you can all go together. They have some questions to ask you about the place(s) you visit, and you'll be preparing a presentation about it(them) to be delivered at Course Meeting 1.
4. Then I'll take the next two or three people through the same procedure as the first group!
-------
The novelty of this course has also attracted the attention of some researchers into the whole phenomenon of education in SL. Alexandra Petrakou is a doctoral student here in Kalmar (at the department called IKD in Swedish) and she has a number of requests to make of you during the course (none of which are going to take an enormous amount of your time …). Luisa Panichi is a teacher and researcher at the University of Pisa in Italy, and she'd also like to hear about your experiences. Finally, you might even hear from a researcher in Missouri called Naomi Baldwin.
The researchers realise, of course, that you're only studying part-time (i.e. that you've got lives as well!), but they'll be very grateful indeed for any feedback you can give.
I'll send you another mail tomorrow detailing the specific requests the researchers are making. The documents they have produced will also be downloadable from the Business Pages section of the course web site.
-------
That's all for now - see you on Kamimo tomorrow afternoon.
Tuesday 5 February 2008
And a bit more …
It's a hectic day today. I've got four course starts in four days …
We had to change the time for the first group on Thursday to make sure that Bryan's first group could make it. Bryan was on-line early (his) morning, and we sorted the exact details in a Skype call. Actually what we did was to share a common picture of what would happen on Thursday, so I'll be in world at about 3.30 pm our time and meet up with him just before we start (he'll be running a set of group sessions for his students that morning/afternoon (four time zones for the course really make life interesting).
Then a new student turned up! He'd applied through studera.nu, but the information hadn't filtered through to me yet. This is just one of those problems you have to deal with on on-line courses: we have an administrative system which is still geared to the rather slower world we had before we started using computers. Fortunately, I heard about him before I sent out the revised schedule for Thursday, so I could include his details on that.
Then one of the students contacted me by phone to check on some details of using Second Life. It was the exact way you set a landmark, and the details of connecting up her audio chat. I went into SL and on to Kamimo and sent her a teleport invitation. When she appeared, we checked that she knew how to Landmark the site and how to find the landmark again. We also checked the audio - which worked fine.
We had to change the time for the first group on Thursday to make sure that Bryan's first group could make it. Bryan was on-line early (his) morning, and we sorted the exact details in a Skype call. Actually what we did was to share a common picture of what would happen on Thursday, so I'll be in world at about 3.30 pm our time and meet up with him just before we start (he'll be running a set of group sessions for his students that morning/afternoon (four time zones for the course really make life interesting).
Then a new student turned up! He'd applied through studera.nu, but the information hadn't filtered through to me yet. This is just one of those problems you have to deal with on on-line courses: we have an administrative system which is still geared to the rather slower world we had before we started using computers. Fortunately, I heard about him before I sent out the revised schedule for Thursday, so I could include his details on that.
Then one of the students contacted me by phone to check on some details of using Second Life. It was the exact way you set a landmark, and the details of connecting up her audio chat. I went into SL and on to Kamimo and sent her a teleport invitation. When she appeared, we checked that she knew how to Landmark the site and how to find the landmark again. We also checked the audio - which worked fine.
News from the front
I was starting another course in Västervik on Saturday, so I took Monday off. Here's an update on progress on the course so far.
I've had a couple of confirmations from students on my list and two withdrawals. The people who've withdrawn have done so because the timetable doesn't suit (they're both late entrants and so didn't have the chance to check on this in advance). Now we're down to 15 and we could lose one or two more before we get going.
I've just created a Course Launch attendance schedule and sent it out to the group of students. I'm hoping that Bryan will get it in time to show it to his students today. It had to wait until today, since the composition of the group is still fluid.
The plan is to greet two groups of students at the same time, but ask one of them to wait a while, whilst I work with the one of the groups. This is a bit awkward, but I can't be sure how many people are actually going to turn up, so I'm holding off on actually announcing which group each person is in until they actually turn up. That way, I'll have a better chance of creating a viable group. It makes it look like I might know what I'm doing too!
Time zones are going to be interesting too: we've got people who live in four different time zones on the course, so I'm trying to be extra-clear about which time we're talking about.
Here's the text of the e-mail that went out today:
I'm attaching a list of times when I'll be expecting you on Kamimo Island this Thursday (7th February). Dr Carter at the University of Central Missouri, will be asking some of his students to join you, but I won't know exactly who's coming to which group until Thursday.
I've also left out your avatar names, because I don't have them all yet. I'll make a list available as soon as we get going.
If you know of anyone who's expecting a time, but who isn't on the list, let me know, or ask them to get in touch, and I'll include them on the schedule.
A note about time zones: we've got participants in four different time zones, so the times are at least duplicated, if not tripled! However, they're all the same time in real time. GMT means Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time zone the UK is in. CET means Central European Time, which is the time zone Sweden and Norway are in. EET means Eastern European Time, which is the time zone for Estonia. CST means Central Standard Time and it's the time zone for our colleagues in Missouri. Thus 15.15 GMT, 16.15 CET and 17.15 EET are actually the same time.
I'm looking forward to meeting you on Thursday.
I've had a couple of confirmations from students on my list and two withdrawals. The people who've withdrawn have done so because the timetable doesn't suit (they're both late entrants and so didn't have the chance to check on this in advance). Now we're down to 15 and we could lose one or two more before we get going.
I've just created a Course Launch attendance schedule and sent it out to the group of students. I'm hoping that Bryan will get it in time to show it to his students today. It had to wait until today, since the composition of the group is still fluid.
The plan is to greet two groups of students at the same time, but ask one of them to wait a while, whilst I work with the one of the groups. This is a bit awkward, but I can't be sure how many people are actually going to turn up, so I'm holding off on actually announcing which group each person is in until they actually turn up. That way, I'll have a better chance of creating a viable group. It makes it look like I might know what I'm doing too!
Time zones are going to be interesting too: we've got people who live in four different time zones on the course, so I'm trying to be extra-clear about which time we're talking about.
Here's the text of the e-mail that went out today:
I'm attaching a list of times when I'll be expecting you on Kamimo Island this Thursday (7th February). Dr Carter at the University of Central Missouri, will be asking some of his students to join you, but I won't know exactly who's coming to which group until Thursday.
I've also left out your avatar names, because I don't have them all yet. I'll make a list available as soon as we get going.
If you know of anyone who's expecting a time, but who isn't on the list, let me know, or ask them to get in touch, and I'll include them on the schedule.
A note about time zones: we've got participants in four different time zones, so the times are at least duplicated, if not tripled! However, they're all the same time in real time. GMT means Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time zone the UK is in. CET means Central European Time, which is the time zone Sweden and Norway are in. EET means Eastern European Time, which is the time zone for Estonia. CST means Central Standard Time and it's the time zone for our colleagues in Missouri. Thus 15.15 GMT, 16.15 CET and 17.15 EET are actually the same time.
I'm looking forward to meeting you on Thursday.
Friday 1 February 2008
Another mail from today's drop-out
The student who contacted me this morning has just replied that she's considering applying for the course when we offer it in the autumn.
Problems with an old password
Just got a phone call from one of our 'in-house' students. She created her account a long time ago (before Linden Labs changed all the passwords after a hacker attack), and her old ID doesn't work.
She's solving the problem by just creating a whole new avatar, but I've got to remember to find out how you change your password. I used to know, because I did it once …
She's solving the problem by just creating a whole new avatar, but I've got to remember to find out how you change your password. I used to know, because I did it once …
Another drop-out
Another potential student has contacted me and said that she doesn't have time to study the course this spring. She was one of the 7 unknown quantities, so we're now at 17 students.
This is fairly typical of this kind of on-line flexible course, by the way. The group won't be stabilised until after about the second meeting in world.
This is fairly typical of this kind of on-line flexible course, by the way. The group won't be stabilised until after about the second meeting in world.
Another Course Information Sheet returned
Today's post brought another Course Information Sheet. I'll make a summary of the information received via these Course Information Sheets after the course has got underway.
A link to the Course Blog
Mats Deutschmann from Mid-Sweden University is running another course on Kamimo - a kind of re-run of the pilot course we ran in the autumn. The pilot course was largely designed for us to practise our skills in the environment, but Mats is running a more organised research project around doctoral students. The difference between his course and mine is that I'm trying to be a lot more 'ordinary' - i.e. I'm trying to run a course under exactly the same conditions as a 'normal' course, whilst Mats' students are a little more carefully selected. Mats is also asking slightly different research questions.
Click here to read Mats' blog: Mat's Blog
SnapzPro
Alexandra needs the SL sessions recorded for her research. Since I use a Mac, neither Screencorder nor Camtasia are viable options, since they're PC programs (though I do have Parallels on this Mac, I hardly ever use it - why would you want to?!).
We've found a promising-looking program called SnapzProX. Our IT-technician/pedagogue, Peter Carlsson (who's also a student on the course) has downloaded it and it seems to work. I hope to get it installed some time at the beginning of next week, so we'll see how it goes. I can envisage, though, that I'm going to have to be fast on my feet during lessons, since these recordings result in very large data files. I'll probably try to remember to record, say, about 10 minutes at a time (which is about the length of the 'teacher talking time' during each segment of my lessons). Must remember to include a reminder about this in my detailed lesson planning.
We've found a promising-looking program called SnapzProX. Our IT-technician/pedagogue, Peter Carlsson (who's also a student on the course) has downloaded it and it seems to work. I hope to get it installed some time at the beginning of next week, so we'll see how it goes. I can envisage, though, that I'm going to have to be fast on my feet during lessons, since these recordings result in very large data files. I'll probably try to remember to record, say, about 10 minutes at a time (which is about the length of the 'teacher talking time' during each segment of my lessons). Must remember to include a reminder about this in my detailed lesson planning.
I've got a top-of-the-range iMac with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (OK, I admit, I'm copying from the screen!) and memory that's called 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRam (if that means anything to you!). It's also got 256 MB of VRAM. I don't understand all this, but I liaised with Bryan (who does) when we were ordering this machine, so that I'd get the best machine I could for use with SL. One of the interesting lessons I'm expecting to learn is what happens when the different machines different students use start interacting with each other.
Coordinating with the US
I've just sent this mail to Bryan Carter. He skyped me yesterday evening (after I'd gone home) to let me know that he's got 15 enthusiastic students who're waiting to work with the Swedes - at least at the Course Launch.
As you can see, the details of the course are coalescing, but it's rarely possible to be definite at this stage of a completely new course. In my spare time I'm starting 5 courses altogether in the next couple of weeks, several of which need extensive web page and podcast production, travelling, coordinating with other agents, etc. However, one of the points of this course as a research project is to see what happens when a teacher tries to work this way in 'real life' (i.e. with very little time and very few resources to work with!).
The mail:
Dear Bryan,
Great to hear about the 15 interested students. The mail I sent out yesterday went out to 19 potential students from here (including a few people on the staff here). I'm waiting for them to disappear (or appear) over the weekend. Out of those 19, I regard about 12 of them as definites, and the others are somewhat of an unknown quantity.
My plan is to invite *two* buddy groups at a time at 45 minutes intervals, starting at 9.00 am your time. That way, we can 'fill the groups up' with people from the second group, if some of them don't turn up. Kamimo isn't such a boring place to be, so I don't feel that it's imposing too much to ask the second group to hang around (and, for example, talk to your US students).
I'll still only be handling one of my buddy groups at a time. What I have to do is do an ID check, so that I can register them, and then take them to Peer Gynt, so they know *exactly* where they need to be at Course Meeting 1. I'll also be checking that they've cracked the audio chat settings (by talking to them!) and that they know what they're to do with your students that day.
Are your lot prepared to work with my lot on a longer-term basis throughout the course (in their own time)? The assignments on my course are:
1. a short individual presentation on an SL-related theme (at Course Meeting 3 on Thursday, 27th March)
2. a role-play exam (at Course Meeting 4 on Thursday, 3rd April)
3. a joint presentation with the members of their buddy group on a theme of their choice (at Course Meeting 5 on Thursday, 10th April).
There's a lot of room for collaboration with your lot during this process, but I don't feel I have the right to make demands on them. We'll be practising presentations at Course Meetings 1 and 2, and there'll be some related materials on the course web site in due course. I'm aiming for the Course Launch and Course Meeting 1 sections of the site to be filled by this coming Wednesday. At the moment, I'm a bit reluctant to go further than that, since I'm not sure of my student group yet. It's a question of letting the course materials grow organically this time around.
I'll send you a more detailed sign-up sheet at the beginning of next week, and I'll keep an eye open for you on line today and on Monday.
Take care,
David
As you can see, the details of the course are coalescing, but it's rarely possible to be definite at this stage of a completely new course. In my spare time I'm starting 5 courses altogether in the next couple of weeks, several of which need extensive web page and podcast production, travelling, coordinating with other agents, etc. However, one of the points of this course as a research project is to see what happens when a teacher tries to work this way in 'real life' (i.e. with very little time and very few resources to work with!).
The mail:
Dear Bryan,
Great to hear about the 15 interested students. The mail I sent out yesterday went out to 19 potential students from here (including a few people on the staff here). I'm waiting for them to disappear (or appear) over the weekend. Out of those 19, I regard about 12 of them as definites, and the others are somewhat of an unknown quantity.
My plan is to invite *two* buddy groups at a time at 45 minutes intervals, starting at 9.00 am your time. That way, we can 'fill the groups up' with people from the second group, if some of them don't turn up. Kamimo isn't such a boring place to be, so I don't feel that it's imposing too much to ask the second group to hang around (and, for example, talk to your US students).
I'll still only be handling one of my buddy groups at a time. What I have to do is do an ID check, so that I can register them, and then take them to Peer Gynt, so they know *exactly* where they need to be at Course Meeting 1. I'll also be checking that they've cracked the audio chat settings (by talking to them!) and that they know what they're to do with your students that day.
Are your lot prepared to work with my lot on a longer-term basis throughout the course (in their own time)? The assignments on my course are:
1. a short individual presentation on an SL-related theme (at Course Meeting 3 on Thursday, 27th March)
2. a role-play exam (at Course Meeting 4 on Thursday, 3rd April)
3. a joint presentation with the members of their buddy group on a theme of their choice (at Course Meeting 5 on Thursday, 10th April).
There's a lot of room for collaboration with your lot during this process, but I don't feel I have the right to make demands on them. We'll be practising presentations at Course Meetings 1 and 2, and there'll be some related materials on the course web site in due course. I'm aiming for the Course Launch and Course Meeting 1 sections of the site to be filled by this coming Wednesday. At the moment, I'm a bit reluctant to go further than that, since I'm not sure of my student group yet. It's a question of letting the course materials grow organically this time around.
I'll send you a more detailed sign-up sheet at the beginning of next week, and I'll keep an eye open for you on line today and on Monday.
Take care,
David
Thursday 31 January 2008
A dropout
Just received a mail from one of the people I mailed this morning (but hadn't got hold of on the phone). She's on sick leave and can't participate.
A mail from a recently-enrolled student
We're getting new enrollments all the time. One of them just contacted me with her avatar name, but she didn't realise she'd need a headset in order to be able to use the audio chat. On the other hand, she hadn't received the 'welcome' letter (the paper version) which has useful information about this in it.
So … I've sent her a copy and made a mental note to myself to include the links to Bryan's and Judith's instructions about the audio on the Business Pages section of the course web site.
So … I've sent her a copy and made a mental note to myself to include the links to Bryan's and Judith's instructions about the audio on the Business Pages section of the course web site.
The text of the 'Welcome' letter
Dear Student,
Thanks for applying to the Oral Production course - we’re looking forward to working with you this term. This mail is intended to give you some practical information before the course actually gets going on 7th February, and to supply you with some more details about what’s planned for the Course Launch day on 7th February.
To start off with, there are now some places you can go to get some more detailed information about what’s going to happen on the course.
The course web site can be found at:
http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/existstud/op/index.htm
You’ll see that some of the links on the home page are already active. If you click on the ‘Blog’ link, you’ll come to the course blog, which already has a couple of posts on it. The ‘Podcasts’ link also takes you to the place where you can listen to the Pre-Course podcast about the course. I’ll be making a podcast each time there’s a major course event.
(A podcast, by the way, is a kind of radio programme on the web. You can either listen to it directly from your computer screen, or click on the ‘Subscribe’ button on the podcast page to download each podcast automatically to iTunes on your computer. You can then transfer the podcasts to an iPod, or burn them to CD. There’s a ‘Refresh’ button in iTunes which will automatically search for new podcasts and download them automatically too.)
The Course Launch links and the Meeting links will become live when we need them, and you’ll find pages, information and downloadable files relevant to each course event there.
Most importantly, you’ll see a link called ‘To Kamimo Island’. This is a ‘SLURL’ - it takes you to a web page with a button on it, which will automatically open the Second Life program on your computer and take you directly to Kamimo Island, Kalmar’s island in Second Life.
I’ll mail you separately about the exact procedure for Course Launch day. However, the big picture is this: you’ll come along to Kamimo Island at the time allocated to your buddy group (which buddy group you’re in is part of the ‘exact procedure’, which I’ll notify you about in a while). I’m going to ask two buddy groups to come along at the same time, just in case someone can’t make it. If everyone’s there, I’ll just ask the second buddy group to wait for about ten minutes, whilst I work with the first one.
I’ll be there as Davric Rinkitink (OK, I was watching a lot of Aristocats at the time!). I’ll take each buddy group on a quick tour of the facilities we’re going to use, and then introduce you to one or two American students, who’re studying at the University of Central Missouri (one of the Kamimo Islands partners).
The Americans will then take you to somewhere in Second Life they’ve been doing some research into. They’ll want to ask you some questions about that location for their own course, but you’ll need to keep your eyes and ears open (virtually!) because you’ll be making a presentation about it at our Course Meeting 1 (there’ll be more information about how to do that on our web site next week).
This is what you need to do before 7th February:
1. Download the Second Life program, create yourself an avatar and visit Kamimo Island.
2. Then make sure that your audio chat is working (we’ll be talking to each other on the course), and have a look at the island. If you go over to the huge metal dragonfly that’s in the Welcome area and click on it, your avatar will get in and be taken for an aerial tour of the island!
3. Last, but not least, let me know what your avatar’s called (if you haven’t already done this). It’ll make things a lot easier for me on Course Launch day!
If you have any questions, or if you need help with any of the technology, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I’m looking forward to working with you this term.
Yours,
David Richardson
Högskolan i Kalmar
HV
Thanks for applying to the Oral Production course - we’re looking forward to working with you this term. This mail is intended to give you some practical information before the course actually gets going on 7th February, and to supply you with some more details about what’s planned for the Course Launch day on 7th February.
To start off with, there are now some places you can go to get some more detailed information about what’s going to happen on the course.
The course web site can be found at:
http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/existstud/op/index.htm
You’ll see that some of the links on the home page are already active. If you click on the ‘Blog’ link, you’ll come to the course blog, which already has a couple of posts on it. The ‘Podcasts’ link also takes you to the place where you can listen to the Pre-Course podcast about the course. I’ll be making a podcast each time there’s a major course event.
(A podcast, by the way, is a kind of radio programme on the web. You can either listen to it directly from your computer screen, or click on the ‘Subscribe’ button on the podcast page to download each podcast automatically to iTunes on your computer. You can then transfer the podcasts to an iPod, or burn them to CD. There’s a ‘Refresh’ button in iTunes which will automatically search for new podcasts and download them automatically too.)
The Course Launch links and the Meeting links will become live when we need them, and you’ll find pages, information and downloadable files relevant to each course event there.
Most importantly, you’ll see a link called ‘To Kamimo Island’. This is a ‘SLURL’ - it takes you to a web page with a button on it, which will automatically open the Second Life program on your computer and take you directly to Kamimo Island, Kalmar’s island in Second Life.
I’ll mail you separately about the exact procedure for Course Launch day. However, the big picture is this: you’ll come along to Kamimo Island at the time allocated to your buddy group (which buddy group you’re in is part of the ‘exact procedure’, which I’ll notify you about in a while). I’m going to ask two buddy groups to come along at the same time, just in case someone can’t make it. If everyone’s there, I’ll just ask the second buddy group to wait for about ten minutes, whilst I work with the first one.
I’ll be there as Davric Rinkitink (OK, I was watching a lot of Aristocats at the time!). I’ll take each buddy group on a quick tour of the facilities we’re going to use, and then introduce you to one or two American students, who’re studying at the University of Central Missouri (one of the Kamimo Islands partners).
The Americans will then take you to somewhere in Second Life they’ve been doing some research into. They’ll want to ask you some questions about that location for their own course, but you’ll need to keep your eyes and ears open (virtually!) because you’ll be making a presentation about it at our Course Meeting 1 (there’ll be more information about how to do that on our web site next week).
This is what you need to do before 7th February:
1. Download the Second Life program, create yourself an avatar and visit Kamimo Island.
2. Then make sure that your audio chat is working (we’ll be talking to each other on the course), and have a look at the island. If you go over to the huge metal dragonfly that’s in the Welcome area and click on it, your avatar will get in and be taken for an aerial tour of the island!
3. Last, but not least, let me know what your avatar’s called (if you haven’t already done this). It’ll make things a lot easier for me on Course Launch day!
If you have any questions, or if you need help with any of the technology, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I’m looking forward to working with you this term.
Yours,
David Richardson
Högskolan i Kalmar
HV
Making contact with the students
I received the latest definitive list of students at the end of the day yesterday, so the first task today was to make contact with them. As usual, the list was lacking some essential details, and some of the details there were wrong! I went down the list of cellphone numbers and called anyone I hadn't heard from, or who didn't have an e-mail address listed. It was a nice experience - makes the students into real people!
The next step was to create records for the students on the database I use (a Filemaker relational database). It makes it so much easier to manipulate the information later on. Once they were there, I could allocate them to buddy groups (and one of the students had already told me on the phone he'd have to come right at the end, so I could put him in group 6), and then export their e-mail addresses to an e-mail list.
Then I created the text of a 'Welcome' e-mail (see next post), and sent it off. And, as it happened, just before I sent it off I got a call from yet another person who wanted to join us! It'll be like this right until we get going.
The state of play right now is that there are 19 students who've received the 'Welcome' e-mail. I'm currently treating 7 of them as provisional, since I have reasons to suspect that they might have changed their minds about studying on the course. There's another one student who's probably married to someone I have been in touch with. I haven't included her on the list yet, but she is probably a definite. I'll put her in a different group from her husband. I don't think they'll both be able to be on line at the same time, which will make Course Meetings interesting. They live in Partille, though (near Gothenburg for the non-Swedes), and there's a strong organisation of study centres in that part of the world, so there's a good chance they'll be able to find an alternative way in.
I'll be in touch with them again after the weekend, with exact details of the time they need to turn up on 7th February. That gives me a chance to refine the lists a little more, as people get in touch with me.
I've deliberately left the whole question of research into the course out of the picture at the moment. This 'Welcome' e-mail is long and complicated enough as it is, and I don't want to confuse matters in the students' minds! I'll bring up Alexandra's research in a separate mail next week.
The next step was to create records for the students on the database I use (a Filemaker relational database). It makes it so much easier to manipulate the information later on. Once they were there, I could allocate them to buddy groups (and one of the students had already told me on the phone he'd have to come right at the end, so I could put him in group 6), and then export their e-mail addresses to an e-mail list.
Then I created the text of a 'Welcome' e-mail (see next post), and sent it off. And, as it happened, just before I sent it off I got a call from yet another person who wanted to join us! It'll be like this right until we get going.
The state of play right now is that there are 19 students who've received the 'Welcome' e-mail. I'm currently treating 7 of them as provisional, since I have reasons to suspect that they might have changed their minds about studying on the course. There's another one student who's probably married to someone I have been in touch with. I haven't included her on the list yet, but she is probably a definite. I'll put her in a different group from her husband. I don't think they'll both be able to be on line at the same time, which will make Course Meetings interesting. They live in Partille, though (near Gothenburg for the non-Swedes), and there's a strong organisation of study centres in that part of the world, so there's a good chance they'll be able to find an alternative way in.
I'll be in touch with them again after the weekend, with exact details of the time they need to turn up on 7th February. That gives me a chance to refine the lists a little more, as people get in touch with me.
I've deliberately left the whole question of research into the course out of the picture at the moment. This 'Welcome' e-mail is long and complicated enough as it is, and I don't want to confuse matters in the students' minds! I'll bring up Alexandra's research in a separate mail next week.
Wednesday 30 January 2008
I've just got the list of students …
I've just got the definitive list of students - which is par for the course for a distance course. My list has got 7 e-mail addresses out of 23 names, which means that I'll be doing a fair bit of telephoning tomorrow to try to get hold of their e-mail addresses.
Ho-hum …
Ho-hum …
What I did before lunch …
The home page for the course web site is now ready. I used a screenshot from Kamimo as a background. I'm not fantastically good at making web pages, but I hope it works, at least. Clicking on the title of this post should take you there.
I've also made a podcasting site on .Mac and produced the Pre-Course podcast giving students some basic information about how the course is going to work.
I've also made a podcasting site on .Mac and produced the Pre-Course podcast giving students some basic information about how the course is going to work.
Practical Preparations
The students on the course need to hear from me today (one week to go). What they need to access is:
• the course web site
• a blog
• and a pre-course podcast
I've just got myself a .Mac account, so I'll be doing the podcasting using that. I've started a blog on Blogger, and the web site will be constructed in Dreamweaver and put out on a Högskolan server. The iWeb program on the Mac is a wonderful tool for making web sites, but it's a bit limited for an entire course site.
Although this is the start of hands-on preparations, I've been mulling over what to do and how to run the course for a long time now. In the words of Bertil Martinsson "Alla slott började som luftslott" (every castle started off as a castle in the air)! The procedure for constructing a course like this is to start with the budget, which I did in late October. The allocation of hours was 46.5 for the entire course. These are 'clock hours', so they've been broken down to fit the various course activities. The breakdown means that we can have 5 two-hour sessions in world + the Course Launch.
We've tested the logistics and technology of the course quite a few times in the last couple of months (including on the pilot course in September-October 2007), so that bit's under control.
The administration seems to be working, in that the applications have been coming in and being processed the way they should. We had a few problems with studera.nu at the beginning, but they seem to have been sorted out.
So, what needs doing now is:
• decide on the details of the assessments (so that I can see what needs to happen during the course meetings, and what it needs to say on the website)
• create the website (which is going to involve a bit of Photoshopping and then quite a lot of Dreamweaving)
• make the first podcast
• update the blog
• create a database on Filemaker for the course
• do a mailshot to the students
Wonder if I'll get it done by lunchtime!
• the course web site
• a blog
• and a pre-course podcast
I've just got myself a .Mac account, so I'll be doing the podcasting using that. I've started a blog on Blogger, and the web site will be constructed in Dreamweaver and put out on a Högskolan server. The iWeb program on the Mac is a wonderful tool for making web sites, but it's a bit limited for an entire course site.
Although this is the start of hands-on preparations, I've been mulling over what to do and how to run the course for a long time now. In the words of Bertil Martinsson "Alla slott började som luftslott" (every castle started off as a castle in the air)! The procedure for constructing a course like this is to start with the budget, which I did in late October. The allocation of hours was 46.5 for the entire course. These are 'clock hours', so they've been broken down to fit the various course activities. The breakdown means that we can have 5 two-hour sessions in world + the Course Launch.
We've tested the logistics and technology of the course quite a few times in the last couple of months (including on the pilot course in September-October 2007), so that bit's under control.
The administration seems to be working, in that the applications have been coming in and being processed the way they should. We had a few problems with studera.nu at the beginning, but they seem to have been sorted out.
So, what needs doing now is:
• decide on the details of the assessments (so that I can see what needs to happen during the course meetings, and what it needs to say on the website)
• create the website (which is going to involve a bit of Photoshopping and then quite a lot of Dreamweaving)
• make the first podcast
• update the blog
• create a database on Filemaker for the course
• do a mailshot to the students
Wonder if I'll get it done by lunchtime!
Getting going
Today's the day everything starts in earnest. We've been accepting a few late entries on to the course, so there's been no point in trying to fix the class list until now. As soon as you depart from conventional campus teaching, you tend to find that getting accurate information about the students is a) difficult and b) essential!
So far I've only had 5 course information sheets back, out of 23 people who've been given places on the course (the deadline was on Monday, 28th January), but this is pretty much par for the course. There isn't an 'etiquette' for how you're supposed to act as a student on a flexible course, so I'm not surprised that it's taking prospective students a while to get their heads around what to do.
We put out an internal announcement about the course for staff at Högskolan too, and I'm fairly sure that some of the new names on the list will be staff.
The forms that have come in have been well filled in, with all the information I needed. So far, the reasons why students have chosen the course are nearly all focussed on the actual content (i.e. they want to improve their oral skills in English), with just one person who also wants to 'study the phenomenon'. The sources of information about the course are evenly divided between the conventional (www.studera.nu) and personal contacts.
Two prospective students have so far declined their places, but I'm going to start calling the people on the list (when I get it later on today) to check on their intentions, and I'm expecting more people to decline then. If we end up with 10 students, I'll be well pleased. It's a small number of students for a viable course, but this is the very first time it's been run (and it hasn't been advertised), so it's a good number to have. Basically, though, we'll run the course with the people we have and sort the finances out later. We'll almost certainly market the course properly for the autumn.
The next post describes the practical steps I'm going to take today …
So far I've only had 5 course information sheets back, out of 23 people who've been given places on the course (the deadline was on Monday, 28th January), but this is pretty much par for the course. There isn't an 'etiquette' for how you're supposed to act as a student on a flexible course, so I'm not surprised that it's taking prospective students a while to get their heads around what to do.
We put out an internal announcement about the course for staff at Högskolan too, and I'm fairly sure that some of the new names on the list will be staff.
The forms that have come in have been well filled in, with all the information I needed. So far, the reasons why students have chosen the course are nearly all focussed on the actual content (i.e. they want to improve their oral skills in English), with just one person who also wants to 'study the phenomenon'. The sources of information about the course are evenly divided between the conventional (www.studera.nu) and personal contacts.
Two prospective students have so far declined their places, but I'm going to start calling the people on the list (when I get it later on today) to check on their intentions, and I'm expecting more people to decline then. If we end up with 10 students, I'll be well pleased. It's a small number of students for a viable course, but this is the very first time it's been run (and it hasn't been advertised), so it's a good number to have. Basically, though, we'll run the course with the people we have and sort the finances out later. We'll almost certainly market the course properly for the autumn.
The next post describes the practical steps I'm going to take today …
Thursday 24 January 2008
Meeting with Bryan's Students in SL on 24th January
I had a meeting today with two different groups of Bryan's students in SL today. We used the classroom space at Hyperborea Bryan often uses, and I presented some basic information about the course and what we wanted the US students to do. I used the audio chat facility in SL, which Bryan had hooked up to some speakers, and they used text chat.
It's quite odd communicating that way, since you don't really know how what you're saying is being received. It's also quite difficult to stop yourself responding emotionally to the apparent body language of the avatars you're 'speaking' to. Some of the heads will drop because of a lack of mouse movement, and it's hard not to think that they're getting bored.
So far, the US response has been very positive. We'll see now what happens when we actually get down to working together.
It's quite odd communicating that way, since you don't really know how what you're saying is being received. It's also quite difficult to stop yourself responding emotionally to the apparent body language of the avatars you're 'speaking' to. Some of the heads will drop because of a lack of mouse movement, and it's hard not to think that they're getting bored.
So far, the US response has been very positive. We'll see now what happens when we actually get down to working together.
Skype call with Bryan, 23rd January
Bryan was on-line at around 3pm our time (8am his), so we took the opportunity of discussing the meeting we're to have later today (24th January).
Bryan's got around 14 students (7 in each group) who're interested in working with our students. However, neither of us have been able to define too clearly yet exactly what 'working with' involves, since we don't know yet! Bryan's students are doing a Composition Course where they visit different places in world to gather information which will be included in various essays they write during their course. They've recently started using SL (I think it was Tuesday, 22nd January), and most of them access SL from a computer room on campus, so they're usually in the same room as each other as they work in SL.
One of the initial questions is: what do they get out of working with my students? The answer is: extra credits! Bryan's made it clear to them that the results of questions they ask the Swedish students will gain them extra credit for their essays.
My initial plan/request is for one, or a pair of, US student (s) to turn up as each group of Swedish students turns up on Kamimo (our island) on Registration Day. My plan is to introduce 3 Swedish students at a time to the environment, and then hand them over to a US student. The US student will then take them to a location on SL they've discovered, show them around and glean their reaction to it. My group of students will then use the impressions and information they've collected as the basis of their first presentation on the Oral Production course.
I'm meeting Bryan's students in SL today (24th January) to present my course to them, and to ask them how much of a commitment they're able to make to it. Ideally each US student (or pair) will become part of each of the Swedish study groups, and work with them all the way through the course, both providing them with inputs from different places in SL and acting as practice audience for their presentations (thus increasing the variety of the feedback they get as they go through the course).
We'll have to see how much of a commitment they're able to make in practice. I'm relying on my students to work together outside course meetings as they go through the course, but I can't require the US students to do this (since they're not on my course!).
Bryan and I also established a line of communication (very important with this kind of contact!). He'll have Skype open in his computer room, and I'll send him both documents to be displayed on his whiteboard and a Veodia link, if I decide to use one. Veodia is a live video feed program I'm testing this term. One of its features is that you can send a link to a live video feed and have it immediately displayed in SL. It'll enable me to appear in 'RL' in SL. I might use it for showing body language, etc during the OP course.
Apart from that, I'll be appearing as an avatar in Bryan's teaching space on Hyperborea this afternoon.
Bryan's got around 14 students (7 in each group) who're interested in working with our students. However, neither of us have been able to define too clearly yet exactly what 'working with' involves, since we don't know yet! Bryan's students are doing a Composition Course where they visit different places in world to gather information which will be included in various essays they write during their course. They've recently started using SL (I think it was Tuesday, 22nd January), and most of them access SL from a computer room on campus, so they're usually in the same room as each other as they work in SL.
One of the initial questions is: what do they get out of working with my students? The answer is: extra credits! Bryan's made it clear to them that the results of questions they ask the Swedish students will gain them extra credit for their essays.
My initial plan/request is for one, or a pair of, US student (s) to turn up as each group of Swedish students turns up on Kamimo (our island) on Registration Day. My plan is to introduce 3 Swedish students at a time to the environment, and then hand them over to a US student. The US student will then take them to a location on SL they've discovered, show them around and glean their reaction to it. My group of students will then use the impressions and information they've collected as the basis of their first presentation on the Oral Production course.
I'm meeting Bryan's students in SL today (24th January) to present my course to them, and to ask them how much of a commitment they're able to make to it. Ideally each US student (or pair) will become part of each of the Swedish study groups, and work with them all the way through the course, both providing them with inputs from different places in SL and acting as practice audience for their presentations (thus increasing the variety of the feedback they get as they go through the course).
We'll have to see how much of a commitment they're able to make in practice. I'm relying on my students to work together outside course meetings as they go through the course, but I can't require the US students to do this (since they're not on my course!).
Bryan and I also established a line of communication (very important with this kind of contact!). He'll have Skype open in his computer room, and I'll send him both documents to be displayed on his whiteboard and a Veodia link, if I decide to use one. Veodia is a live video feed program I'm testing this term. One of its features is that you can send a link to a live video feed and have it immediately displayed in SL. It'll enable me to appear in 'RL' in SL. I might use it for showing body language, etc during the OP course.
Apart from that, I'll be appearing as an avatar in Bryan's teaching space on Hyperborea this afternoon.
Meeting with Alexandra P, 23rd January
Alexandra and I met up to start the process of constructing a data-gathering exercise around the Oral Production course this spring.
I explained the basic situation around the course:
• between 10 and 20 students
• most of the students Swedes, but a couple of 'foreigners'
• a link-up with Bryan Carter's students in Missouri (to be defined more clearly on 24th January)
• a mix of communications technologies in support of the course, including a course blog, podcasts and a simple web site
Alexandra described how she would like data to be gathered, if possible:
• me keeping a journal (this blog for the time being) about everything that happens on the course, including all the contacts with students
• recording of SL sessions, using a program like Camtasia (if we can find one which works for Macs)
• RL video recording of David at work (to see what happens in RL as he teaches)
• RL video recording of at least one student on this side of the Atlantic (my suggestion being Peter Carlsson, who's also an IT-techician/pedagogue in our department here)
• 'probes' (still pics taken by friends of students as they participate in the course)
• questionnaires for all participants
We discussed how we'd inform the students about this data-gathering. Alexandra's drafting a letter to go out to them soon.
I explained the basic situation around the course:
• between 10 and 20 students
• most of the students Swedes, but a couple of 'foreigners'
• a link-up with Bryan Carter's students in Missouri (to be defined more clearly on 24th January)
• a mix of communications technologies in support of the course, including a course blog, podcasts and a simple web site
Alexandra described how she would like data to be gathered, if possible:
• me keeping a journal (this blog for the time being) about everything that happens on the course, including all the contacts with students
• recording of SL sessions, using a program like Camtasia (if we can find one which works for Macs)
• RL video recording of David at work (to see what happens in RL as he teaches)
• RL video recording of at least one student on this side of the Atlantic (my suggestion being Peter Carlsson, who's also an IT-techician/pedagogue in our department here)
• 'probes' (still pics taken by friends of students as they participate in the course)
• questionnaires for all participants
We discussed how we'd inform the students about this data-gathering. Alexandra's drafting a letter to go out to them soon.
About this blog
'OP' is the Oral Production, 3hp course which is being run by Högskolan i Kalmar on Second Life during 2008. So far as we know, it's the first 'regular' course in Sweden which is being run in its entirety on SL. Alexandra Petrakou from Högskolan i Kalmar wants to gather data about the planning and delivery of the course, and has asked me, David Richardson, the course teacher, to keep a record of what goes on during the planning, production and delivery of the course.
It's a bit difficult for me to keep track of pieces of paper, so I've decided to try to keep this journal as a web log!
It's a bit difficult for me to keep track of pieces of paper, so I've decided to try to keep this journal as a web log!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
