From my perspective, this assignment has been both challenging and immensely rewarding. I have to say, that I knew almost nothing about any of the technologies that I have learnt to use/navigate through the web 2.0 tutorial. I initially felt that it was too much, too fast and that we were thrown into the deep end. I struggled throughout the assignment in terms of having to spend a lot of time understanding, using and then blogging about my experiences with the technology. In regard to the learning outcomes of this assignment, I believe it was a success in terms of my ongoing and self-directed learning of new technologies and skills.
The small tasks each week were an excellent way to learn. I felt that each week’s tutorial task had just the right amount of content (theory), and guidance (the suggestions for what to blog about). The only downside that my entire tutorial class found was the intensity of the web 2.0 tutorial in conjunction with the other course-related work. The workload became difficult to manage because we did not finish all of the tutorial tasks in class. This meant that we had to catch up with these tasks, stay up to date with readings, while maintaining our progress through web 2.0.
Possible improvements that could facilitate better learning outcomes for next year’s students would depend on whether the course co-ordinators would prefer depth and breadth, or a more broad and superficial focus on current technologies. The assignment effectively engaged us in contemporary technologies through the weekly tasks, but the time constraints have meant that my understanding and ability is at an introductory (low/medium) level rather than a high level of skill. Basically, if students are expected to demonstrate a higher level of skill and understanding than we have (collectively) shown – changes should be made to the work load of the course so that the tutorial tasks and web 2.0 assignment clash less in the early stages of the semester. Similarly, focusing on fewer technologies in greater depth could assist students in learning at a deeper level.
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I agree. What we're learning has been so valuable but we need time to do and to digest it. I think that in terms of web 2.0 depth and breadth would be good and my suggestion to achieve this would be slighly smaller groups (so that we'd have fewer blogs to read and could contribute more meaningfully to the ones that we do) and fewer course readings, so we could focus on Web 2.0 and what we're learning in the tutes.
ReplyDeleteHi Cath,
ReplyDeleteIt is a difficult compromise to reach, and I can also understand the planning and curriculum design factors that impact on this course from a teaching perspective. As much as we may think that depth and breadth would have been preferred (towards the end), we could have been intimidated and overwhelmed if we were expected to learn and know these new technologies too thoroughly. My point was, that if the teaching staff reflect on our learning outcomes and realise they wanted a deeper understanding to be conveyed through our experiences with web 2.0 - changes will need to be made to the structure of the course. However, if this has been effective from a learning outcomes perspective, it would be great to have a similar assignment next year (because it has been enjoyable).