Does any one out there teach online?
If yes I would love to hear about your experiences.
Especially concerning motivation and isolation...
Siân
E-learning
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e-learning
hey sita/sian..(which one?):)
i haven't had any experience teaching online but
am taking graduate dipl. in e-learning at the moment..
wonder you want to know about motivation
and isolation..?
angie
in sydney
i haven't had any experience teaching online but
am taking graduate dipl. in e-learning at the moment..
wonder you want to know about motivation
and isolation..?
angie
in sydney
Hi Angie!
Here is an article I wrote about elearning.
http://www.fun2learnmore.de/modules.php ... cle&sid=20
Best wishes
Siân
Here is an article I wrote about elearning.
http://www.fun2learnmore.de/modules.php ... cle&sid=20
Best wishes
Siân
Less specification+more fun=more learning?
Hi Sian
First up, a small disclaimer. My case is concerned with online teaching and developing software for vocational qualifications online rather than language, and my rather disappointing experience with an offline distance learning course. BUT - and a big 'but' - by contrast, if nothing else, it does bring home how e-learning can and probably should work
The crux seems to be this: the more constrained the learning outcomes (whether because you're trying to get qualified in some health and safety legislation, or because your learning institution is desperately trying to demonstrate to its funding bodies how bloody professional it is - subtext: b*gger the students ) the less motivated people seem to be.
Maybe it's because vocational learning is now so bullet-pointed, management-oriented and bleached of its fun that the computer screen is for many students on such courses a personalised glimpse into the abyss. Unfortunately for us e-learning developers the money is in just those areas: where a workforce already saturated with initiatives from all sides - always impracticable, often plain inconsistent - our job seems to be to allow folks to get certification online because they're sure as hell not going to get any day release.
There is a silver lining, though, and you hint at it in your article. Don't constrain - the path of righteousness may be fine and good, but the road to perdition is a damn sight more educational. Get people to choose what they want to learn and how they want to learn it - without the Pavlovian assumptions of the kind of thing I've talked about above - and yes, any sense of isolation and lack of motivation can disappear. Assuming they ever emerged in the first place.
I suspect this is because this kind of 'free' approach to learning - which definitely works for learning languages and probably also for learning how to teach languages (this forum, for example) - is closest in structure to both the way we generally use the Web, and to how we learn experientially. We get to shape the way our learning develops; we get to create our own personalised maps of the intellectual space we're trying to find our way through.
Which is why after ten years in the job I've not done a Dip or Master's in language teaching (other things, yes) and never will. Online or offline. If, in 2003, a typical vocational course in TEFL says we must know about Chomsky and then proceeds to polarise opinion on the basis of a half-quote from 1965 it's not empowering us to frame our thoughts; it's infantilism. Which, of course, is something the Captains of Industry who bestow upon us their infinite largesse surely decline to sanction.
The challenge, then, for learning online is to make the triviality of box-ticking seem like a journey of discovery. Not, on the face of it, something the computer is ideally designed to facilitate. But I believe there are solutions and when I've got round to putting some preliminary ideas into some form of words they'll be the subject of another thread.
I'd value your feedback when it happens, 'cos you've really hit on something with the online community thing. Fun2learn rocks!!
Freundliche gruss(????), Al
First up, a small disclaimer. My case is concerned with online teaching and developing software for vocational qualifications online rather than language, and my rather disappointing experience with an offline distance learning course. BUT - and a big 'but' - by contrast, if nothing else, it does bring home how e-learning can and probably should work
The crux seems to be this: the more constrained the learning outcomes (whether because you're trying to get qualified in some health and safety legislation, or because your learning institution is desperately trying to demonstrate to its funding bodies how bloody professional it is - subtext: b*gger the students ) the less motivated people seem to be.
Maybe it's because vocational learning is now so bullet-pointed, management-oriented and bleached of its fun that the computer screen is for many students on such courses a personalised glimpse into the abyss. Unfortunately for us e-learning developers the money is in just those areas: where a workforce already saturated with initiatives from all sides - always impracticable, often plain inconsistent - our job seems to be to allow folks to get certification online because they're sure as hell not going to get any day release.
There is a silver lining, though, and you hint at it in your article. Don't constrain - the path of righteousness may be fine and good, but the road to perdition is a damn sight more educational. Get people to choose what they want to learn and how they want to learn it - without the Pavlovian assumptions of the kind of thing I've talked about above - and yes, any sense of isolation and lack of motivation can disappear. Assuming they ever emerged in the first place.
I suspect this is because this kind of 'free' approach to learning - which definitely works for learning languages and probably also for learning how to teach languages (this forum, for example) - is closest in structure to both the way we generally use the Web, and to how we learn experientially. We get to shape the way our learning develops; we get to create our own personalised maps of the intellectual space we're trying to find our way through.
Which is why after ten years in the job I've not done a Dip or Master's in language teaching (other things, yes) and never will. Online or offline. If, in 2003, a typical vocational course in TEFL says we must know about Chomsky and then proceeds to polarise opinion on the basis of a half-quote from 1965 it's not empowering us to frame our thoughts; it's infantilism. Which, of course, is something the Captains of Industry who bestow upon us their infinite largesse surely decline to sanction.
The challenge, then, for learning online is to make the triviality of box-ticking seem like a journey of discovery. Not, on the face of it, something the computer is ideally designed to facilitate. But I believe there are solutions and when I've got round to putting some preliminary ideas into some form of words they'll be the subject of another thread.
I'd value your feedback when it happens, 'cos you've really hit on something with the online community thing. Fun2learn rocks!!
Freundliche gruss(????), Al
amazing!:)
I've taken seven on-line courses myself, but they have all been for computer-related subjects. The courses were great, and I'm still taking one now. I have never, however, understood how you could teach a language completely over the Internet. Perhaps it is because I am too used to teaching in a regular classroom. I use the Internet for 40% of the ESL class I teach (2 days out of 5) but even though the students are working on the computer, I'm there to answer questions. I don't know how an all on-line language course might work.