Putting it all together

The end of the year is almost here (less than two days to go!), and I have been working on putting the Powerpoint together. It has been a good chance to reflect on the whole course, and to see what still lies ahead for me.

The good news is that I am happy with the aims I have developed for the new online component of the CEE programme, and I think the activities have the potential to produce outcomes that will meet those aims.

I can see that I still have a way to go on the technical side to fully implement the activities online so that they are easily accessible, clear, interactive and easy to monitor. I definitely need to go through moodle courses so that I can make the most of its potential, although I think I have enough basic knowledge to get it working now. I think elluminate is a potential support to the moodle base, although I find without the camera, it becomes rather too impersonal for my liking. I hope this can be rectified (both with better software, and higher speed internet access) in the near future.

This course has introduced me to producing wikis, and I can see their benefits, although at present I am leaning towards asking the students to create a collaborative web page rather than a wiki, as it allows for more interactive content and design features.

Reflective blogging is not new to me, and I still use a personal blog to communicate with a lot of my former students, who are now spread around the world. It has been a good way to monitor my completion of set tasks though, so that I can go back and see what I missed and what areas needed to be developed further.

I am pleased to have had a good response from KTC towards the online learning activities, and I am really looking forward to working with them and getting some feedback on how it goes.

Although I have been using e-mail and the internet for nearly 20 years, this is really the first time I have tried to use it to give students online access to learning materials, and to encourage independent learning. There is still a lot of resistance to using this kind of educational tool in Japan, but I hope by introducing it through a select number of activities first, that both staff and students will have the opportunity to become used to it, and to become aware of its advantages, so that its use can be expanded into other areas of the C.E.E programme in future.

I look forward to continuing with this course design in the New Year.