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.
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