2 weeks have been put behind for my new Clinic course at SCCL, and today marks the end of the 2nd discussion forum posting (帖子B). my observations for the past 2 weeks are as follows:
1. the 10 teacher participants are highly motivated & on-task, and all of them have shared a lesson example as 帖子B and most of them had reviewed 2 peers’ shared lesson and posted questions and comments. **WELL DONE TEACHERS**
2. content of 帖子B is however missing in focus. while some teachers have highlighted 不满意的地方。But none of these are related to self-directed learning (SDL). it appears that teachers have no issue with carrying out SDL. is this true? why is this so?
3. the discussions were superficial. teachers only agree with each other, and there were no alternative views? why?
4a. i have sent out 2 brief emails (and cross-posted to the DF). for most teachers, i do not know if they have read my email and acted on it.
4b. in a related note, i also do not know how often the teachers were (re)visiting the online discussions. OPAL does not provide details of last login/visit timestamp of participants (which blackboard does).
5. there were multiple technical-related issues. in all, 9 feedback to OPAL helpdesk were sent.
in response to the above observations, i would carry out the following refinements:
for (2), i hypothesise that the instructions in the handout weren’t clear enough. to rewrite instructions in the handout to spell the 2 parts that are expected; hopefully this makes instructions clearer.
for (3), i hypothesise multiple causes. [1], the 1-week interaction cycle may not be long enough for teachers to have multiple answer-reply iterations to dwell deeper into the SDL topic. to overcome this, i will modify the existing plan and try out a 2-week cycle instead. [2], the 24-hours rule is not enforced throughout the entire interaction period; thus teachers may not have caught up with the momentum to have more extensive discussions. to overcome this, i will remove the 廿四小时行动, and extend the ‘game rule’ to be constantly abided throughout the 2-week. [3], teachers only agree with each other, and there were no alternative views. to overcome this, i could perhaps provide some scaffolds on the question types.
for (4a), i would add a line towards the end of the email requesting for read acknowledgement.
for (4b), this is an OPAL design issue, which is beyond my control. i could file another suggestion to OPAL team via OPAL helpdesk.
i hope the above refinements will help to bring discussions to a greater depth so that participants may reach a deeper understanding of the upcoming 协作学习 (collaborative learning, CoL) theme.
(acknowledgement: photo shared by realhardwork)