Monday 19 May 2008

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 12 Reflection

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
Evaluation planning..

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Evaluation planning.

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, I also commented some of the team member´s blogs.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

EMIM / E-Learning / Assignment 8

How to formatively evaluate e-learning course designs?
I was starting to make a plan; who to ask, how many different people, what.. I know that the people who are going to answer / evaluate are our "classmates" but still it would have been nice to make such a plan. It´s close to (usability) testing which is one of my favorite subjects.

But seems like in our team we just make some questions, maybe to Doodle as a poll. Now I´m trying to be a part even to that. Seems like I´ve missed all the other action, just made some comments.

BUT to this subject. Evaluation should be planned well; who is going to evaluate, what kind questions to make (open / selective / both), what are the actual questions and so on.

A Doodle poll is of course OK, at least it´s easy to realize.

I´ve made some evaluations of other team´s courses and it was interesting to use different polls; with wikis and Google Groups.

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 11 Reflection

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
What a process this really have been!

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Our wiki really is an excellent place :)

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle and our wiki. And now we got even a Zoho-account!

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, I also commented some of the team member´s blogs.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

EMIM / E-Learning / Week 10 Reflection

1. What was the most important thing you learned this week?
I enjoyed the conversations about people´s experiences - again II ;)

2. What was particularly interesting/boring in this week?
Our group is really active in our wiki I´m proud :)

3. Was there something you didn't quite understand and want to know more about it?
Noup.

4. What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week's activities raised for you?
Lot´s of reflecting about other´s experiences.

5. Which tools did you use this week, explain what was the purpose of using these tools (e.g. social talk, to regulate my team activities, to work on documents)?
This blog & Moodle, our wiki and del.icio.us account.

6. With whom did you communicate during this week, how many times, with which tools, and for what purposes?
In our wiki with the participants, some emailing also.

EMIM / E-Learning / Personal Contract II

My objectives: Why I wish to learn/do something, what is meaningful for me/for my group as part of the assignment I am responsible of?

I want to deepen my knowledge, eLearning is familiar to me, but there is always something to learn more. Meaningful is my experience, maybe the courses I have done give something to this team too. Especially the wiki courses I´ve made.

What I would like to add is the pedagogical aspect: that is what I need to learn the most! Different technologies to set up a course are quite familiar and I think the management side is easy to me :)

What resources will I need: What software tools and resources I am going to use? Resources can be people, different artifacts, materials.

I most definitely need my team! I have already done one group work almost alone in the autumn ;) I will need my laptop, Internet connection, Firefox, Word, Excel, Photoshop..

Peer evaluation and discussions are to be important.

What is also needed: blogs, wikis, Skype, email, Doodle (a new thing for me, making polls).

How will I do it: What is my strategy to achieve my objectives? What is the order of my actions? How will I use different resources in my actions?

I believe some planning is to be done with Word and Excel, but maybe we also will use wiki or something (LATER EDIT: Google Groups). Laptop is the artifact to work with and I need Internet connection and Firefox to keep contact, deliver material and so on. With Photoshop I most likely do some pictures or something.

I will read the course materials, join the discussions with my team, do all the weekly assignments and with the help of these join the design of our team´s own course.

Evaluation criteria: How do I know that I was successful? Develop measurable criteria to evaluate your activities in respect of your objectives.

Well, the team will give feedback. And I´m quite harsh to myself as usual ;) I will rely on straight feedback, I will give myself points or something.

The peer evaluation will hopefully be lively :) And I believe the facilitator will guide me.

Self-reflection: Did I achieve my objectives? Use the criteria what you developed to assess how well did you work. Reflect, what worked and what did not?

For now we have been doing some planning. Of course I suspected a bit more activity, but as it has been seen so many times it´s so damn difficult. Maybe I should really study how to activate people to do group works via Internet / webcourses. Finding some successful ways would really help many!

The current situation is better, I´ve managed to get a babysitter on daytime :) These first months with a baby have shown me that there is no planning anymore.. Just have to do things when it´s possible. Evenings seem to be the hardest (the baby is in her most demanding), at daytime I have time to study since the baby usually sleeps a long nap. I would have enjoyed doing more, but I just have to settle with this I´ve got. The guys have been so hyperactive that I have troubles following them and that is really new to me!

Google groups didn´t work that well, somehow it was very plastic or something. Wiki has worked out much better even though they are not that much different. Little things count :) Doodle´s polls are easy, del.icio.us got me confused at first, Skype has worked well as usually. We´ve really used a lot of different softwares and services!

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Based on the comments

At the beginning of the course I felt I´d do a lot as usual, be the one who does things when others don´t have time or loose interest or something.. The surprise was quite big when I noticed that I don´t have the time to be the one anymore. Luckily in this group there are two very active fellows :) And I ended up kind of being late and fell back, I lost the sense of "what is the current situation". After that I´ve been more or less confused, trying to catch up. Still am.

My objective to the group was to participate a lot, be in the middle of the actual thing. I ended up commenting to GoogleGroup/wiki/blogs, adding some links to del.icio.us, collecting something about wikis.. Those (wikis) are kind of what I was planning to give to this group and I actually did write something about my experiences, but so much more could have done.. But I will rise again! There are still weeks left so now my objective is to give as much as possible to this next task, evaluating.

EDIT:
Well, you can see that I tried, check the history of Formative evaluation page in the wiki.. All deleted what I tried to put in there. Well, at least I created one page to there.

So I´ll stay as a commentator, try to suggest things to every part of the course. Discuss. And try to find some useful materials and so on.
I just have to settle for the grade I get.

EDIT II:
Well, now I´m trying to make our course visible and be part of the gang to produce the evaluation poll / questions.