LTS502 Tutor Blog

As I have been heavily engaged with the Project “Internationalisation of the Curriculum” since July 2007, I find that everything I do is now coloured by what I am learning in this project.  I decided to develop a scenario that would explore the opportunities or not, of sending the LTS502 participants over to Sarawak for a 2 week exchange.  As I was not going to be able to attend Tute 3 on the 20th July, I thought this might be a neat activity where the group could explore this “opportunity”.  On reading the notes that have been placed up on the file exchange, I am impressed that at least part of my teaching objective, that this activity might raise awareness about the opportunities such an exchange may have.  I am very much aware that this was a very fanciful activity and I am still not clear if the members really found this a useful activity.  I think I should have thought through the objectives a little more and made these available to them at the beginning of the session, however at the same time, by doing that may have changed what actually happened.  I would like to re-run this activity in a face to face situation and observe people’s reactions to it – and perhaps make sure people who have actually had an exchange be available.

I was please to see after yesterday’s conference that a few members have already started to think about what will be their media/ICT activity, so I think we are on track.  Only two weeks to our face to face workshop, so I had better get moving on that…

signing out

I was really pleased that we were able to connect successfully today using the video conferencing units.  I never entirely trust technology, but today everything worked well. 

There are a few things I should have done today: – talking about protocols for communicating in a video conference – so people don’t feel left out and making sure people know when to take a turn, what happens if two talk at the same time, making sure that we look at the camera when speaking, and making sure we are turning the “automatic” off so we don’t have to keep moving the camera.  I will think about how I should set up some ground rules before next week.

It is great to have such a diverse group, I am really enjoyed the conversation around giving and receiving feedback, the importance of respect (loved Earl’s story about his first class in a new school – I am glad he gave his teacher a hard time).  Ths is what I think is great about face-to-face meetings and I regard Video conferencing in this. 

My Captains Log 12/8/08
This year was the first time we had such a small group for the LTS502 Workshop.  We have had regular numbers in the past of between 12-18 participants, with last year being the largest group – 23 starters!  I was trying to think how we can get the most out of the workshop with only 4 out of 5 participants as the original plan had 3 groups working with quite different scenarios – providing an excercise fo revision of curriculum alignment (from LTS501) and also an opportunity to work in a multi-disciplinary team.  I decided to have just one scenario, which the group of 4 worked well together on (and they were mulit-disciplinary – Earl and Vasily from the NICA (Circus) – who use an apprenticeship style of teaching, Bopha (FBE) who teaches in the traditional face to face teaching – mainly having tutorial classes and Daniela (who teaches large numbers totally online through OUA)  This was wonderful to have such different perspectives coming together to work on a common problem.  There was also Ben (who Teaches in the traditional format of lectures and tutes – psychology) who was unable to attend the workshop, who needed to work individually on this same scenario.
Another difficulty is that we will be meeting together weekly for the next 4-5 weeks via video conference as we also have the challenge of being spread over the three campuses!  As always, technology is a necessary evil and I hope that all will go well and we will connect successfully.  I have run cross campus tutes this way and once we get used to it, I find it becomes very natural, so with a big breath, and a positive attitude, I hope we will all get some value out of working together for the next few months.

Signing out for today – I will try to put in a reflection on a weekly basis    :-)   (smile)