Monday 6 October 2008

First thoughts on the new course

Logged in to New Literacies today and posted a couple of contributions.

Really nice WebCT site -a real effort to create something more fun to use than the standard interface and structure of most WebCT sites.

Interestingly, there's no section on the assessment - a big 6,000 word essay apparently. I revert to student behaviour and it's the first thing I look for.

I suspect that the course team took a deliberate decision to conceal it so that we'd concentrate on the readings and activities.

There's no rushing ahead to later weeks' activities as weekly units look to be time released. There is, however, a detailed, thematically arranged reading list).

I think it's a good move not to hit online learners with all the content on day 1. The tracking back option will be more useful though as learning is about recursive movements.

The welcome video from Julia was a nice touch (that's an idea I'll steal!) and I liked the idea of PowerPoint presentations to introduce course team and students - much better than "say a few words about yourself in this forum".

Mobile Blogging from here.

3 comments:

DrJoolz said...

Glad you like the space Tony!! It puts on the pressure having you on the programme of course.
Yes we hide the assignments so that people don't just come in, work on those and leave the discussion to others.

We are quite strategic though and we make sure that all you do will eventually feed in to the assignments.

yes, hiding the future units is so that people don't get over faced but we also like people to keep in step with each other and not race ahead.

Tony McNeill said...

Aha! I thought so.

Actually, I'll admit that one of the reasons I'm 'going back to uni' is that I like looking at other people's course designs and how they've realised them online using what tools - e.g. big lumbering VLE, light Web 2.0 tools - they have to hand.

The cinema foyer and old school ticket stubs - great visual metaphor (makes me think of Terence Davies' The Long Day closes)

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