I am really worried about this course and where it is heading towards. I visited yesterday all my course-mates' websites to understand how far have they had reached in their studies. The picture was not nice. We have around 70 students and only very few of them (13-14) have had the strength to fully keep up with pace of the schedule. I didn't survey this in more detail. But if some trends are shown in the numbers the real situation would appear more visibly.
The picture I saw last night was not nice: the activity of participation is reducing every week. I read the reflections of some facilitators and it made me think. The argumentation that they use is mostly like: "all the students are grown-ups, they must base their learning activities on intrinsic motivation and it is their problem if they want to get a grade or not."
To me this kind of thinking from facilitators' side is unacceptable. Sorry. I know that I am reacting a bit too strongly now, but I can explain why.
In my bachelor studies we had a group of 21 students. After reaching in the middle of the 3rd year (it was a 4-year study) we had a course named 'proseminar', where we were supposed to write the theoretical part of our bachelor thesis (around 30 pages). We had had one course like this at the beginning of 3 year and the one that I am writing about was a follow-up course. So we reflected and wrote and discussed and it seemed to us that everything was quite ok. At the time of exam the facilitators came into class and said that only 3 of us could pass. Others were considered lazy, stupid and sloppy and we were lectured using similar key points:
• you all are grown-ups
• you must do more work - if you are busy or ill it does not count
• it is your problem how you get your grade.
I was among the 3 who passed in the first round. Despite we had a chat with our facilitators about the abnormality of the situation - nothing changed. Ultimately 9 of us graduated in time - we supported each other and had kind of psychological support-group were we talked and talked on what went wrong and what we could be doing.
Almost every course-mate remembers this whole experience like a nightmare… The only positive thing being that this experience made me into a education scientist. I think it put my priorities in place.
About our course now. If there were some 10 students who are not active anymore then I would not have to bother to write something like this. But there are the majority who have left - then something must be seriously wrong and we must do something!
We cannot allow the same unprofessional attitude that my previous facilitators had: that students are not acting as grown-ups; that the students don't have enough motivation and they do not contribute enough.
My first point is: we are surely all grown-ups. But at least students from previous soviet countries have the background were grown-ups did not supposed to be self-directed. Taking responsibility in learning is a pretty new concept and our historical background does not support this. (It would be interesting to do a survey about cultural differences of this course). So students still do need some active support from facilitators. Furthermore, I believe that learning is psychologically so complex that learners will always need active support because while people are learning they are vulnerable.
About intrinsic motivation … I believe that most of the students who signed up for this course have shown motivation and willingness to learn. So they had motivation at least at the beginning! For some reasons they lost it along the way. Intrinsic motivation is tricky and thin and extremely easy to kill. So the reason behind leaving the course is not so much about not having the motivation but losing it. Hence the key priority should be thinking on how to try to bring them back to learning process and our course. How? That requires thinking. But perhaps it would be a smart idea to ask them what have been the reasons that they are not so active anymore and how can we all make the course more acceptable for them.
I know that redesigning your course at the middle of it seems meaningless but it would seem worse that only 15 of us would eventually graduate.
By writing this emotional piece I do not intend to hurt anybody, but simply point out my concerns which could be a basis for some further discussion. It seems to me that we are forgetting the essence of learning.
1 comment:
Well, what do you suggest besides what we have already done?
I have sent many emails to my group members, offering any help, describing all actions in more detail, asking what is wrong and so forth
I have contacted the other students of the country who have talked with these students to come and work with us again
I have contacted the facilitators locally who have contacted with my students
I have posted many triggering mails to my weblog
I have posted same triggering mails to students weblogs
I have made some explanations to these late students how they can catch up with some reduced workload
Part of my group has suggested we move on and not wait if someone maybe starts working with us. Maybe it never happens, since the course is voluntary choice of each student.
It is good to show your anger and concern, but truly our aim is not to torture students with letting them to swim if they cannot.
My question is why some students can do all what is needed and same times others can not? Is it the fault to blame only facilitators?
Learning in the challenging environment is the aim of this course, getting all the experiences how to handle situations in distributed international courses where people do have freedom to choose the place where they communicate and work.
If we look at the groups, they have all managed to arrange their group spaces and started working on course ideas.
However, it takes longer time than expected to make such things happen.
And all the facilitators are aware of it and we have every week reconsidered some of the tasks to make the workload smaller.
basically since we work as groups group can move with its own pace, but in the end we need to be at the same level. This is something each facilitator knows and tries to make happen.
A challenge what we learn in this course is also that people who plan e-learning courses should not stand at idealistic point of view how well such learning works, it does not always work what you as a group plan, and to cope with this is one of the possibilities of learning.
Sure we wish to improve the course every day of it and not wait people failing.
You can prove that you can plan better course when you prepare your own course prototype. And all the pitfalls you see in this course you can try to remove.
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