Closing thoughts. Part 1

"Finish the course with a closing post with feedback about the course. Did you learn new and useful things? Was it challenging enough? What could have been better? What could you have done better. Did the course facilitator do a good job? How will you apply what you have learned? Who would you recommend to do this course next time?" ... Said Sarah

I'm going to do the other evaluation as well but here are some bloggy, non-structured thoughts.

Yes, I did learn some new and useful things. One of the things I learned, or rather confirmed, is that there's a lot of stuff out there on the Internet and I'm just going to know small bits of it. In a course like this you get to know the mainstream applications that people are using. We tertiary people come from a rigorous academic background and we have to get used to not knowing about how to use some of the tools properly and act like neophytes.

I found that courtesy and temperance are valued in on-line educational communities and patience and support are the norm especially when newbies are involved. There's a hard core of cool powerful on-line people and these have, almost by definition, adopted a collaborative and inclusive approach to their dealings with other people. This has set a standard for protocols and etiquette in on-line sessions.

Be that as it may, I found most on-line people a bit earnest. Not naturally, rather that's the way it comes across. Don't remember hearing much laughter in Elluminate sessions.

I wanted to see real people's faces more. Not family pics, though that's better than nothing. Moving pictures of the people I was talking to. I regard the telephone and texting and emailing and recent Elluminate sessions as what you do if you can't have the real thing... a real conversation with real people. Some research I have seen says that the most powerful teaching tool is a person in a room. I'm afraid I have a hierarchy of delivery preferences. Some of my colleagues are passionate about on-line interactions and good for them but when we want to learn something together with third parties we go into rooms and talk in the old-fashioned way.

Do I want to keep going? Sure. More Elluminate sessions. Smarter use of Google Docs and similar products are the order of the day.

One of the best things was keeping the Elluminate meeting room open. All the time. I ducked in there for several purposes and learned a lot of stuff informally.

There's a certain amount of mucking around with Internet products that's not terribly efficient but has to be gone through to obtain easy familiarity. Curiosity is a powerful motivator but as an ex-manager don't know how to account for the unstructured playing that seems required. When we try to formalise how to learn things in nice sequences, like in Wiki Educator, you can get to the end of the lessons but still not be sure what you've done.

People do courses for lots of reasons. I teach microprocessors and robotics and some students get very involved but others pass quite well in a cold uninvolved way. I don't make them formally reflect. Maybe I should.

I've got lots more thoughts but that will do for today.