Week 3

New address!
After 3 weeks of trying to organise my Wordpress blog and not getting anywhere fast I've decided it's time to move on!!! And here I am at my new address! octel14.blogger.com!!!
I don't know if Blogger is better than Wordpress but at least the tutorials are more useful! 

Week 2

Activity 1

I have definitely observed all of these approaches in my language blended courses!

Students that follow the Deep approach take advantage of every learning opportunity, tackle tasks with enthusiasm and in general "dance to the music" and have a great time doing it! :)

The other big proportion of students are Strategic. They participate in the tasks but they are more worried about the "steps" than they are about "dancing"! They want to know how many times they need to participate in the forum, how many words they should write in the blog and what's going to be included in the test. They eventually get there, but I don't think they enjoy it very much.

There is also a small proportion of students that take very little part if any in the tasks proposed. They try to memorise grammar rules and vocabulary  but that approach does not help them perform in a real life situation. These students often fail the course.

I would like to think that on ocTEL I employ strategies from the Deep Approach, however it is sometimes very tempting to opt for the strategic option.

I believe that  learners who tend to take a ‘surface’ approach might be able to learn a bit more effectively on-line as they can take advantage of the work done by other students. In a face-to-face class, they are usually left behind when their lack of preparation hinders their ability to participate in class tasks. On-line however they can take advantage of material shared by their peers.

Deep learning can be encouraged by presenting students with authentic situations that motivate them to explore and reflect on the topic discussed.

Excellent reflection on this questions here: 

http://chcoll.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/octel-activity-week-2-approaches-to-learning/

Encouraging a balance of deep and strategic approaches might help students stay focus. 

Week 1

Activity 1.1:

Autonomous and Social?
Education has killed any curiosity and any opportunity of self-determined learning (I found reading about heutagogy this week particularly enlightening! http://heutagogycop.wordpress.com/history-of-heutagogy/).
We have a hard job in front of us and we will probably never see the education system reformed in such a way that it restores student motivation to learn just because they want to (they want to be a doctor a teacher or an engineer, they want to know about literature or science or whatever it is that they WANT) and not to pass an exam and get a piece of paper that says that they are a doctor or a teacher or an engineer, that they know about literature or science or whatever they have pass their exams for.

My focus has now shifted from the technology and how we use it towards students’ roles and attitudes.I tried flipping the classroom and like “mchaudhry” had mixed results. I also tried directed study tasks but I’m sorry to report that they were a lot of work to prepare for little results if any. You can argue that maybe the tasks weren’t well prepared and that was certainly my first reaction. I was so disappointed that I slowly and reluctantly started reversing to “normal” teaching, the teaching that I knew worked before I tried these new “methods”.

But I’m in this MOOC because I haven’t given up! I know in my heart that my intentions were good. I was just missing a piece of the puzzle and I think I have found it!!! HEUTAGOGY is the magic word for me! The study of self-determined learning. All this time I was assuming that my students were curious, self-directed, autonomous learners and I still think that there is a potential for them to be so. However, that’s not the kind of learners that we have encouraged them to be so far. The moment our students (or trainees) enter in any form of formal education (training course, school, university, etc.) they expect objectives and aims to be defined for them and assessment to be set for them to show that they have reach those objectives. Questions like “Is this going to be in the test?” or “How many words do I need to write to pass this assignment?” are testament to this.
Things will not change overnight, but now my focus will be on how to define those aims and objectives for my courses so I can help my students start the shift towards self-determined learning.

Activity 1.2

After this week’s reading I am starting to reflect on the concept of Heutagogy (http://heutagogycop.wordpress.com/history-of-heutagogy/).
It’s early days for me, but I have the feeling that I none of the methods we are using at the moment is the answer, at least not in their present form.
We have:
“learners TAKING PART in their own learning”
“peer learning”
“community learning”
“learners with a critical consciousness”
I think all of these methods are missing an important piece: “learner’s self determination”. Unless the learner “wants” to know, there is no method and no planning from the instructor’s part that will achieve the learning goals.
Do our students want to know? Or they just want to pass the course?

Week 0

There is a big range of interests and experience amongst the participants of ocTEL2014 and that the challenge for the course is to cater for all those different experiences and preferences.
I think that these groups are a great way to help us focus on our particular interests rather. I expect the seminars to be quite general to give us a starting point to talk about the topic under the light of our particular interests.
I also like the fact that the different perspectives make me think of topics that I had never considered before.
The third question is: “In what ways is a MOOC like this one well or poorly suited to these challenges?”
I’m not sure what they mean by a MOOC “like this”. This is my first MOOC so I have nothing to compare with but I think a MOOC is a good place to meet people from all over the world, with different experiences and skills.

Badges:

ENGAGEMENT ONLINE: This is one topic that I had never seriously considered and taking part of this MOOC makes me realise how important it is for online students! Of course engagement is the first stage of any learning experience and it’s the first thing I plan for my classes. However, I now realise that the very basic act of going to the physical place where the class is taking place and sharing that physical environment with the rest of the class has a big part in that engagement!

And thinking of my own experience in this MOOC, the badges that are helping me get started with each of the activities that I need to complete. and once I get them they give me a sense of accomplishment!

Aha!!!

After 4 weeks working with a variety of communication tools for the ocTEL MOOC's activities I've decided to start a blog. In Week 0 the organisers suggested we started one, but I was too busy watching the webinar, doing the activities and getting to know other participants. I didn't have time to start the blog and I was happy to enter my comments in the forums and groups. But as time went by and I wanted to go back to some of my comments or something interesting discussed in past weeks I found it very hard to navigate the forums, groups and blogs (not to mention tweets and other forms of communication that I haven't tried yet! And it was pondering about what was happening that I had an "aha moment"! Leaving my comments disseminated around the different communication tools is like leaving "pencil and paper" notes on the classroom board, someone else's notebook, or a napkin in the cafeteria! You wouldn't do that if you were serious about your studies! When I attend a face-to-face course  the first thing (and probably only thing!) I take with me is a notebook  and a pen. And a blog seems to be a good digital replacement for a notebook! It even has extra features of course! You can have links to digital resources, you can easily share your work with colleagues, you can edit and organise your entries and resources with little effort, you can access your notes anywhere where there is an Internet connection and at any time, and I'm sure there will be more features that I will discover as I go.

So here it is! My first attempt at blogging!!!