About My Students

My students are high school graduates who join our college for bachelors program. But before they start their bachelors they should have IELTS band 5 as this is the minimum requirement for this program. If they don’t meet this requirement they have to study in the foundation program where they will learn English language and improve their communication skills.  Most of them are young and are in the age group of 18 to 24.

They are learning Business, Engineering and Information Technology courses at our colleges.  As shown in the video there are very few students like ‘Susan’ and many like ’Robert’. Most of the students want to get certificate or degree so that they can get better salary.  I think this is because since childhood they have been told that they need to study to get better job and that why most of them just are in college to finish their degrees.

One of the best things at HCT is that learning outcome and course outlines are defined and agreed by experts in the field. Teacher and students have clear idea about the objective of the course and the content coverage as well. With E- books websites like Pearson and Wiley plus students always have an opportunity to look at the course material any time anywhere.

Students at this stage require proper guidance and need a teacher which can make explain the content to them with examples and make it easier for them. Student cannot learn on their own by doing self-study. At HCT students are required to have 4 contact hours.

The vision at HCT is to promote learning by doing rather than memorizing theories. Assessments are divided into different components. Most of the assessments contain a project portion where students have to demonstrate practically what they have learned throughout the course.  Its up to the teachers to link this project with industry and make it more interesting. There are other components like Mid exam, Final quizzes, and Class participation depending on the course content.

Module 2 : Project

Hi All

 Below is link  to my project technology in class room :

http://prezi.com/-lhbfbzn4-iy/modul2-project/

Hope you will like it and use this technology in future.

 

Change and the 21st century learners

I agree with the author of the article “The 21 Century Learner“ that the role of the teacher has transformed in last few decades. Traditional teaching styles have phased out where teachers used to teach only text and theories on boards with white chalk or a marker. In 21’st century teacher’s needs to continuously update themself with new technologies, knowledge and ways to deliver this knowledge to students. One of the main goals at HCT is to continuously provide training to staff so that they are up to date with current tools and technology available in market.  In the article author mentioned difference between students and teachers which I don’t think is correct. Technology does not have effect on multitasking, picture base or collaborated learning it depends more on the nature person.

Authentic learning model is widely accepted among learners. It doesn’t only provide leaners knowledge and theories but also provide real world scenarios how to use this knowledge in real life. Students get more engage with such type of learning as they can see the use of theories. In my project after every lecture students have to do case studies which are based to real life scenarios. These case studies give clear idea to students how to use the acquired knowledge in particle life. I think in future most of the teaching will move to authentic learning models.

Supporting information age literacy in higher education

In this Information Age I think all youngsters have passion for the digital technology. They have passion to learn and use new technology weather its smartphone or website. They can access these devices anywhere any time. As it was shown in the “HOLE IN WALL” article two weeks earlier students get involve with technology and they don’t even need teachers to show them how to do things. Students are always keen to use these devices in class room and as 21st century educator it’s our job to facilitate them and integtegre the digital technology in class room. In my project when I used Camtasia to deliver a lecture, students get really excited and they shown a strong desire for this type of learning. They were excited online lectures as they can access them anytime from their home and they can watch them as many times possible.

Analytical thinking and application and Critical thinking is very important part of leaning. It is not enough to learn the knowledge but students should learn to how use this knowledge in different situations.  For this purpose in my project I use different case questions at the end of the lectures which requires students to do analytical and critical thinking.

Communication skill is an important skill. In my project students are required to join discussion boards after lectures and share their ideas and comments on other ideas as well. This task provides them opportunity to share their ideas in words and improve their communication skills.

Understanding the "bigger picture" is the ultimate goal of the course. Students should be able to use this knowledge not only in class or in a particular course but they should apply this knowledge at their work as much as possible. For this reason student are engaged in real life case studies which obviously cover the solution orientation as well.

It is our job to provide awareness to students what they are accountable for. As in many cases students don’t realize that they will be held responsible for the actions they perform online. For this reason I provide Do and Don’t list to students when they are communicating with each other on discussion boards.

I try my best to mentor my students but always promote them to become mentee of other teachers and their elders as well. As it will broaden their thinking and vision.

As mentioned in the second articles we as educators should focus on teaching students how to get authentic information and how they should use this information in their projects or assignments. Once students have clear guidelines they will follow them and produce projects which will reflect their own work. For example in my Leadership course students are require to write a project report of 1000 words. Before starting the task I provide them following guidelines.

• They can search online and download material from anywhere for information purpose. (Use Internet or Library )

• They have to make sure information provided is correct.  (Verify the information)
• How to reference any material  (Proper References )
• Use only the ideas not copy the sentences (Write in your own words)

Once they finish their work they have to upload it on Safe assign. This software will evaluate their work against Internet and other students work and show them the percentage of plagiarism in their work. It will also highlight the areas which have been copied in their project. Students will instantly know their mistakes and they will do the assignment properly and resubmit it before deadline.

Gamification: Using Game Mechanics to Enhance eLearning

As mentioned in the article it is very important to occupy the attention of the student or in short get them engage when using e-learning. We need to develop their wants and liking for successful e-learning and this can be done only by rewarding learners.

I have used some of the ideas in my eLearning project for occupying student’s attention that are presented in the article. It is very important to have clear goals and objective and to have rewards that are associated with these goals. If objectives are clear to students from the beginning then it is easy to grab their attention. For this purpose I always explain in advance what are the objectives, outcome and rewards associated with the particular task to students.

In my project before using the eLearning material I gave students an online pre-test which highlight current knowledge of the students. There are some (reward) marks associated for attempting this test, which encourage all students to attempt this pre- test. After doing the test want will develop among the students to learn the words and definitions that they were not able to understand during the test.  They are then provided with eLearning material which helps them to learn things which were unclear to them earlier. Students have already idea about the types of questions from the pre-test which help them to focus on the material. Once they finish the material all students have to do a post-test. This posttest shows their improvement and learning from the eLearning material. Students can see a big difference between the pre-test and posttest marks. The posttest (reward) marks are recorded in the overall grades. This technique used in my project is similar to the “Linear flow of Goal” model mentioned in the article.

With help of posttest and pretest it becomes easier to measure the progress of students and helps in providing them feedback that how they can further improve. In some cases students feedback also help to improve or simplify the e-learning material. Using e-learning and rewarding motivate students to get involved in the task as they can see their peers are learning knowledge while getting rewarded.

Mobile learning

I have read chapter 3 “Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education” and chapter 13 “Designing principle for mobile learning” for week nine task.

Chapter three provide us detail that how we as teachers can create digital narratives using smartphones which can be used as resource in our teaching and training. This task highlights the strengths and benefits of the technology and the pedagogical approaches involved in using mobile technology. The educational technology I have chosen also require to create a digital video episode for students using camtasia which can provide post learning to students before coming to class. I can use the below questions which I learn from the article for finding effectiveness of using this educational technology tool.

• ·         What were the advantages of creating teaching episode?
• ·         What were the disadvantages or challenges of using the devices?
• ·         What were the most difficult aspects of creating a teaching episode?
• ·         What were the most positive aspects of the task?
• ·         How useful were digital videos as a tool for teaching?

My personal belief is that in future mobile learning will play an important role in education. Lot of research is going on in this field. As mentioned in the article “Designing principle for mobile learning” there are many reasons for using this as an educational technology tool. Some of them are: Students can afford it, they know how to use it and it provides them real word relevance. They can use it anywhere, anytime with anyone.  

Designing principles plays an important role for laying foundation of any educational tool. Without proper designing principles it is very difficult to use the technology for learning. I have chosen following designing principles for implementing my project. 

1. Real world relevance : Use learning in authentic contexts

2. Mobile contexts:  Use learning in contexts where learners are mobile

3. Whenever: Use learning spontaneously

4. Wherever: Use learning in non- traditional learning spaces

5. Whomsoever: Use learning both individually and collaboratively

6. Affordances: Exploit the affordances of technologies

Reflect on relevant literature

Flipped class room is relatively a new concept and it is mostly used in western world. It has not been applied in Middle East so far and I think it has great potential for higher education students especially in UAE. Students can pace them self and work independently using flip class room. They can attend missed lectures and do catch up. Using flip class room students will get more chance to work on application and problem solving with teachers. They can also use these video for revision and exam preparation as well. People who have used flipped class room have an excellent and positive experience with it. It has not only increased students learning but as well as their grades. Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams from Woodland park high school invented flip class room concept for their college but it has tremendously picked up and is now used worldwide as mentioned on their blog.

The pedagogical approach used in flip class room focuses teaching time on solving problem, case studies and application with students rather teaching them boring theories in class. Theories students can learn on their own by watching digital videos outside class time.

The challenging part for implementing flip class room at HCT will be to make digital videos simple, interesting and in small portions. 40 min lecture will be boring for students and they will get more confuse. It will be good to break the lecture into chunks of 5 to 7 min. This will not only help students to develop better understanding but it will also maintain their interest as well.

My next step is to create story line for minimum two chapters and then convert it into digital format using Camtasia. I have used an old version on Camtasia and I am hopeful that new version will have more advance options.