Just finished the first week of my NIACE AOL course delivered in Moodle – it’s been quite a steep learning curve! I had already had some experience of using Moodle during my SL course with the Consultants-e earlier in the year but this is a lot more full on! Lots of reading and activities to complete as well as holding down a FT job!
I have been particularly intrigued by Gilly Salmon’s 5 Stage Model on e-moderating and can see myself in the stages as a learner as well as some of the other participants on this course.
A few thoughts:
- reluctance/shyness in participating in online forums/messaging – how much does this depend on previous online learning experience, or confidence in the subject matter?
- do participants worry how they will be judged by other participants on their insightful posts in forums or is it just that the amount of reading we have to wade through puts people off??
Is this interaction (or reluctance to) similar to students learning English (or other subjects) who are scared of making a mistake in front of the class? Allegedly language sts who just have a go and aren’t scared of making mistakes are the ones who make the most progress – can/does the same apply to online learning?
I am pretty intrigued by group dynamics with regards to elearning. Salmon’s model, in my view closely resembles Tuckman’s 1965 5 stage model of group dynamics and I have run a number of sessions at the university on the application of Tuckman’s model in the classroom and then on the web.
I think that as long as we are able to see parallels between the online and real classroom spaces and interactions and plan our teaching with interactions, taking into account the needs of our learners as people the medium of delivery will facilitate correct pedagogical procedure. Salmon’s model, tuckmans model are ways to think about teaching interactions but the application of any framework that works inthe real class should have an online analogue in my opinion
By: andy mischief on March 6, 2009
at 1:08 pm