In the past week I tried to read as much as possible. On this moment I am still working on my curriculum plan. I hope I can finish this tomorrow.
The first text I read was that from Chin en Williams. The way they look at e-learning from the point of view of a holistic learning environment is very clear. It seems to me that when you can look at your course design each time from one of the six learning environments they describe, you‘ve got a course that differentiates to the different needs of each student involved. It gives me a very good structure when I have to evaluate my own e-learning course. For me, this article was the best I read.
After reading the article from Kupper en Wulfften, I have been thinking on one specific sentence about assessment. They put forward that you have to look at behavior, because it predicts future behavior. But I think that a very important part of assessment is the reflection of the participant on his behavior., because this tells us something more about attitudes, believes, values… When assessment on competences would only focus on behavior, it would be difficult to integrate this in an e-learning course. But reflection in e-learning on the own and fellow students work, thoughts … works very well, as I see being now in a course myself.
In this blog we also should give some feedback on the feedback of task 4.
I think you gave us a very constructive feedback. In this way I am encouraged to improve my work.
I was surprised to see that ‘networking’ was already so early mentioned in literature. When I started as a social worker in 1986, in Belgium nobody spoke about this, certainly not in casework. Nowadays everyone is focused in establishing a formal and informal network around a client. It even seems a ‘hype’ here in social work.
What also came up to my mind, while reading the feedback, was about always search for arguments in literature and research. I know that I have to work on this. I have 17 years of practice and by reading and doing I have some ideas about things and I write this down, without looking back to the original frameworks… I have integrated this in my daily work. For example the general definition about learning. I simply wrote this down, because with my experience and what I heard and read during the past years, I came to this. It is nothing special and certainly you find some arguments in literature to support this.
On this moment I am even in doubt whether it will be possible for me to be a good assessor in Virclass, because I am not so good in this. It makes me a bit unsure.
I wonder also how you think about 'practice based evidence' versus 'evidence based practice'. Because for me both are important, one more part of the metaphor of ‘acquisition’, the other one of ‘participation’. Like Anna Sfard says, it is also about values. Knowledge is power and as you say, these arguments give us power to reach something at our Univeristy College. But can we also give some place for experience? I hope you understand my point, because it is difficult for me to explain in English, with the correct nuances.
Finally I want to say something about my course. It seems that nobody understands what I mean with ‘signalling’. I found some texts where this word is used in the way I see it, but I can’t find it in a dictionary. So what I mean is that a part of ‘structural social work’ and a task for a social worker is always picking up ‘signals’ or 'aspects' in a case that seems to be a more fundamental problem in more cases. When it is so, a social worker can set up different actions to do something with this 'signals'. In my course I would like to have some exchange between students in different countries about methods and instruments social workers use. But I also want to know how social workers deal with this signals. Because I see , in certain work contexts in Belgium, social workers just keep on working with the specific case and have giving up giving signals to policymakers in the organization or the government.
So I wil end this blog, because it seems a little bit long. Hope you understand what I mean. I am really interested in your comment.
Hi Wim:
ReplyDeleteLet me address your comments and reflections here in the blog as you raise them.
First: I am so pleased your find the readings useful. And when you use the blog to comments the different papers; this is of great use for you fellow students- as well as for yourself later!
Please look into my comments to Mark yesterday about reading academic text in English; I am impressed over you all!
Well: it is good that you find our feed-back om task 4 useful! A few brief comment further:
- to “Network”: I guess that it took some time before “net-working” became widely used. But when I read Sociology at the University in Bergen there were a lot of focus on the origins of the different theories. So we really learned stuff like this (and sometimes it becomes useful!)
- I do agree with you that it is important to use all the knowledge we have acquired in our teaching. Especially within professional education, like social work, it is important to utilize knowledge we get during the years working as nurse or social workers. And as you say; we need both evidence based practice and practice based evidence; both sides are important!
So it is not always we have a back-up from literature to refer to. But since this is a ECTS credited course, we found it wise to remind you about this “academic writing” rules here early in the course- to help you with your final work that also will be assessed on detail like this (and to remind you the useful web-pages about T&L).
And please Wim, you must not lose faith in yourself as a good teacher! During the course here you will jut learn how to take your F2F skills into the virtual room; there are nothing magic in e-learning that you don’t have, and you will clearly manage your work in an exelent way!
Thank you for clarifying what you meant by “signaling”. It seems to be a very interesting topic, - and clearly interesting to have a comparative perspective on.
But this will we discuss more today, in the Vitero session!
Grete Oline
dear wim,
ReplyDeleteI think you do not have to be worried about your role as a teacher or an assessor, because I am pretty sure that you will be a great assessor. I received feedback from you, during the campus week and in the time after this, and I can say your feedback has been very useful everytime. You are very resource-oriented (not deficit-oriented), and therefore your feedback is always productive and encouraging. And I think these belong to the most important aspects of good assessing and giving feedback.
I know exactly what you mean when you write about the difficulties with the English language. I read approximately 30 or 40 english books per year, so my understanding of English nuances is pretty well I think, but producing is quite a different task... so often I am sitting in front of my PC and I am searching for the right words. This will be a big challenge in a course. I hope we all can manage this.
I read your curriculum plan, and I wasn´t able to find the word "signaling" in it. I think I have an idea about what you mean with this word, but perhaps it will all be much clearer when you outline it in your course program.
have a nice weekend! bye,
alex