Module 1: Learner Characteristics

Desktop Summit group photo by KittyKat3756

Firstly an update on how many people are in the course. To date we have met seven people either online or in class and expect to meet another four people this week in class. So expect to interact with 11 participants - Andy, Avtar, Ben, Deborah, Felicity, Kamya, Lucy, Manik, Michelle, Pete, and Yvonne. I will let you know if others join us. A few people are starting more slowly than others due to other commitments.

Are you ready everyone to begin on the first module?
We begin with the topic Knowing the Learner. Developing a profile for your learners is an important first step, and you will see that we have given you a long list of questions to help you to think about this. So we suggest that you follow the information and the activities in wikiEducator in order. The Portfolio activities for each topic will guide you with the evidence you will need to develop for your assessment portfolio.
In module 1, we will be exploring a range of topics:

• learner preferences - should we really concern ourselves with learning styles? 
• literacy and numeracy - how many of your students can write really well and do the maths they will need in their course? 
• prior learning - what do your students already know? and 
• expert learners - what does this mean exactly?

The next topic in this module is Culture and you will need to return here to the blog hear more about this topic later on.

Do

1. Keep posting regularly - to your blog and update the class on the Sharing your Work discussion forum - that way you will get feedback on your ideas. 
2. Leave comments for others - as you will see to the right, several people have made a start with their blogs. Great work everyone. So please take the time to reward them (following good behaviorism principles). 
3. Portfolio work for module 1 -  plan to get this as ready as possible for assessment before moving on to the next module. That way the coordinators can give you early formative feedback and you will know if you are on the right track for the rest of your study in this course. 

What is coming up?
We look forward to meeting more of you this Friday on-campus - D317 - 13:30 - 15:00.
An online class will be scheduled later on before the mid-term break - please complete the Doodle poll so we know what suits you.

Welcome to Learning and Teaching in Practice

by Sebastiaan ter Burg

Welcome everyone to Learning and Teaching in Practice. This is a big course. Big credits (45), big learning hours (450), big expectations for all of us no doubt, and hopefully a pretty big and memorable experience. How big can it get? Manageable we hope. To keep you in touch with what is going on in the course we will use this blog to tell you interesting stuff and to showcase what people are doing. Make sure you subscribe by email to the blog.

During the course, we will walk you through what it means to be a teacher in a learner-centred and experiential pedagogy and introduce you to some technologies to support this. We will assist you to develop or maybe change your teaching philosophy, and you will discover, we hope, some exciting ways to design learner-centric environments. Personalised learning and collaborative learning are biggies for us so.....we are asking that you keep a blog to document your thinking and learning as you go. If you want your learners to do things like keep an e-portfolio or a blog, then you need to experience it for yourself first. 

Why a blog?
A blog is great for sharing ideas and information and giving each other encouragement. It becomes your space to do with as you will.  If you choose the right place to set it up, you can take it wherever you go, so think of it as an expandable suitcase full of goodies which never wears out. The possibilities are endless. The course blog is on blogger.com and it has everything you need and is simple to use. Some of you may prefer to use an existing blog (great stuff) or to experiment with other platforms.

We won't be playing 'big brother' exactly but being able to give you some pointers and feedback on your blog as you go helps us to feel useful. You see we have this silly idea that if you are active on your blog, then you are participating in the course activities and learning. We love action!

Some of my previous students have gone on to use their blogs for professional purposes. Sarah Stewart is a great example of someone who has gone on to be a very active blogger about her practice as a midwifery educator. If you follow her, you will also find out who she is as a person. She knows how to write without compromising privacy so check it out if you are worried about this side of things.

Keeping a blog will also help you to develop your thinking for your assessment portfolio, and for some of you the blog and assessment portfolio may be one and the same.

When does a blog become an assessment portfolio?
Some of you will find that your blog will also serve as an assessment portfolio. It depends how you want to organise it and what you want to put in the portfolio. If you have lots of files, then you will need another spot for them.  Google sites is great for doing this. You can also set up a 'navigation tree' so things can be found easily. I have set up an assessment portfolio as an exemplar, and intend to keep adding to it as the course progresses. What you put in yours will look very different to mine but hopefully it will give you some ideas.

Morepork Owl by Russell Chilton

For each module you will need to document these aspects for assessment in this course:

• evidence of your learning, 
• a narrative about that evidence, and 
• reflective discussion about your learning and practice. 

You are also asked to support your ideas and writing with references from the literature - research articles from journals, and good quality articles, information and reports from websites.

We are hot on APA referencing in this course. The Purdue Owl APA Formatting and Style Guide can help with this as she is very wise. Original ideas and discussion of lots of different perspectives are well sought after - there is no right answer in this course. All the detail about assessment is on the Course Outline on the course website.