I am a novice in active learning. I have tried jigsaw, think-pair-share, 2 minutes paper and STAD (student-teams achievement division). I challenge myself to learn a new cooperative learning strategy this semester. I choose Gallery Walk (well, I also use Carousel but that one is for poster evaluation).
When I google about Carousel , I find so many versions of it. But the bottom line is, Carousel is a strategy that you use WHEN you want to “semi-force” each individual student to take turn in giving their opinion/answer/response and they “have” to share it with others. Ideally, 4 to 5 students per group.
But in my case, I used Gallery Walk for my PG class. They are more matured students so the whole class is considered as one group. But in this case, I increase the number of questions (each question is position in one station) so they can move around to answer the questions at their own pace and preference. There is no compulsion or assignment of which station would be their first station. They can start at any station to give their response.
There were 7 questions (7 stations) and 11 students. There were few students who absent so, the class seems bigger.Some of them were waiting their turn. These two stations have two “controversial” questions. So, many students were eager to answer the questions.Not so popular station. But, since I instructed them to go to ALL stations, some of them visited this station later than the other stations.
I had a queasy feeling every time I was invited by the group to have a sharing session with them. I feel like an impostor. But, I just took my chance to give my best.
So, there were about 20+ academic staff attended this session. I could see familiar faces. I have high regards towards these people. I salute them for having unwavering passion in teaching especially to those who are “otai” with so many years of teaching experience under their belt. I am supposed to learn from them, not the other way around.
Nevertheless, I shared my experience in using Round Robin in my class. Apparently, some of them have already used it but they don’t know it is Round Robin. Indeed. I learn more from them.
Some of them already left when we took this picture
What else can be considered as e-content? That is the question that I ask myself numerous times. To find the answer, I start to google apps and whatsnot. I came across many useful apps but some are not free like Prezi and Kahoot. I subscribe to Prezi. It is not cheap but after Latihan Ikhtisas, I aim to make small changes in my life and teaching practice. Even though I am not techno savvy (I still use my handphone – Samsung Note3 that I bought more than 5 years ago), I try my very best to learn new things.
I came across Acadly (It is FREE). It has similar features like our UTM elearning (I know right! What’s the point of having so many learning management system for one course?). But I am not sure how I can make it public so that anyone and everybody can see it all over the world (no boundary, readily accessible to all). I think for the time being, I will keep this on holdbecause apparently it takes a bit of time to get used to it. With so many up-coming conferences and whatsnot as a committee, presenter or participant, I don’t want to overly exerting myself and affecting my health.
For now, I am still learning to use it. So, I don’t have the confidence yet to share it with others by showing my classroom practice using Acadly. But, what I can share are some of interesting things about Acadly.
We had an opportunity to share our experiences with our colleagues from School of Civil Engineering. They are engineers. Yup. I feel small to share my experience with them about e-content. Since the semester will start next week, I just want to share with them about what we can do to prepare our e-content for this semester. It is not about getting the extra bonus marks per se but it is about how to document our teaching practice through digital means.
I met some brilliant minds in our country who went to some of the best ivy leagues in the world such as Cambridge University, University of California, Sacramento and such. I feel small indeed.
When I share my experience filling in TESDCP and TES (E-content), there was a little commotion. Wow…. it is indeed a quite controversial thing. I told them why it is important for us to link URL on our self-assessment (TESDCP). Some of them lamented that nobody told them before about it. Well, I told them honestly that I thought that everyone knows the importance of linking URL (even though it is stated if applicable) on each aspect of their self-assessment and reflections because it carries certain weight on how our self-assessment and reflection is being evaluated.
I told them that we need to strategise now. Since all of us have to prepare our OBE, we can put our reflection on the CQI part on our webometric and later on link our reflection (that we write on webometric) on certain aspects such as Goals of student learning and such on TESDCP. In this case, we fulfill three things which are required on us: OBE (CQI), webometrics and TESDCP. It is a matter of how we simplify things. One of the members asked me “Why do we have to do redundant things?” I don’t have any idea or answer to that. My reply is “It is about how we help UTM to be more visible“. One of them who is very well-versed in developing learning management system (he even develops his own personalised system) asked me further, “Why can’t CTL make our e-learning as public instead?“
It makes me think why are we in this predicament on a first place. Why do we have to document our teaching practice? Does it mean that if we don’t well-document our teaching practice we are not doing our job appropriately as university instructors? Clearly, I don’t have definite answers to this.
Full house. I was feeling so anxious at this moment. Alhamdulillah there was no little accident happened at that moment. The guy who sat behind me is the recipient of Anugerah Webometric 2017. I learn a lot from these guys.
