EDUC3325 - Week Three Reflections

Phew . . . the weeks just seem to get busier as the semester progresses. I barely found time for the week's Blog entry.

The EDUC3325 class is really starting to gel. This is the smallest number of students that I have ever had in this course (14) but they are open and willing to learn in a blended environment. Monday night we got everyone's Blog set up (link in the left hand column of my Blog) and then had a good discussion about Productivity Tools (word processing, spreadsheets and databases). Prior to class everyone had selected a productivity tool and completed an online quiz about the tool (i.e., definition, types, advantages, challenges and educational uses). I then copied all the quiz data into a MS Word documented - converted it into html format and posted it to our Blackboard site. In class - I then divided students into three groups and had them create summaries for each of the three major types of Productivity Tools. They then sent me these summaries for the Blackboard Digital Drop Box and I pasted the three summaries into a new MS Word document - which was then posted to our course Web site.

We finished the evening with each of the students creating their own grade book in MS Excel. A number of them had worked with Excel before and it was wonderful to watch them support those students who were new to this productivity tool.

Wednesday night was an "optional" tutorial to complete the Lessson Plan and Grade Book assignments. About half the class showed up and they made some GREAT progress on their lesson plans.

Outside of this course - I hosted two wonderful visitors from the UK at the University of Calgary. They were Peter Bullen - Director of the Blended Learning Unit at Hertfordshire (http://perseus.herts.ac.uk/uhinfo/info/blu/blu/blu_home.cfm) and Peter Chatterton an eLearning Consultant to the Higher Education Academy on a major eLearning Benchmarking project (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/benchmarking.htm). They spent a day chatting with us about our ITBL Program at the U of C (http://tlc.ucalgary.ca/teachingprograms/itbl.html). And, then a second day facilitating presentations for the University of Calgary community. I found both of their sessions very informative. Peter Bullen is involved in some very creative evaluation processes for his institution's blended learning inititiatives (i.e., student video diaries - 10 students received digital video cameras for a week - they recorded their expectations for their classes each morning and then reflected on what actually happened in the classes each evening). Peter Chatterton emphasized the importance of benchmarking initiatives in order to move beyond innovative "pockets of goodwill" within an institution. I can relate to this - as we have to move the ITBL program beyond a series of course redesign projects to one which supports sustainable program development within Faculties at the U of C.

Here are the links to the sessions that Peter Bullen and Peter Chatterton facilitated today on blended and eLearning in the UK (to increase the size of the PowerPoint slide screen - just drag it to the left).

Peter Bullen's Elluminate Session on Blended Learning in the U.K. (password - Thursday) http://elluminate.ucalgary.ca:8308/recording_login.html?recording_id=EmbeddedBlendedLearning%23403406_2006-09-21_0907_v65

Peter Chatterton's Elluminate Sesssion on Benchmarking eLearning Initiatives in the U.K.(password - Thursday) http://elluminate.ucalgary.ca:8308/recording_login.html?recording_id=PeterChatterton%23403276_2006-09-21_1306_v65