Course Evaluation

So, it's that time of year when students have the opportunity to work out some of their frustration by evaluating courses....

I won't waste this opportunity by summarising everything I learned during my studies in 1501HUM. I will, however, note several concepts and tasks that had significance for me as a 21st Century citizen and as a future teacher of coming generations of 'digital natives'.

Positive Feedback

1) The delivery of the course was fairly relevant - rather than simply talk at students about different aspects of new communication technologies, I was relieved to find myself working on a computer, trialling web search engines other than Google, using a digital camera to create original video content, consciously acting as content user and creator and disseminating this 'cultural artefact' to others viaYouTube... 

2) Many of the questions raised by the course (How secure are the details you provide in exchange for access to social networking sites? What rights do you have regarding original content uploaded to the web? Should the government regulate web content as they do other media forms? Where can cyberpunk go from here? Is the operational quality of Open Source software comparable to that of 'closed source' systems like Windows or Apple?) resonated with elements of my personal experience that I had never previously considered as problematic or contested. Since beginning this course, I have been at pains to remove (or avoid giving out) my personal details from social networking and other sites; I have trialled several examples of freeware and Portable Apps, and am now considering a permanent migration from Windows to OpenOffice; I am considering my options in terms of protecting, controlling and sharing my original digital content, and rethinking the ways that I access and use the content created by others.

3) The key questions raised and concepts explored were also relevant to my wider acquaintance. Teacher education has turned out to quite a specialist field of study, which tends to preclude sharing meaningful conversations about educaiton-specific content with people not in the field. The concepts of this course, on the other hand, was the catalyst of numerous arguments and debates with my family members and friends that helped me to clarify my understandings, devise pathways for further investigation, benefit from other's knowledge, ideas and experiences, and extend my own. My siblings were particularly helpful in that they starred in a video advertising campaign I directed for the Culture Jamming task.

One of my family members experiencing smart phone frustration.

4) The first small group task was successful in getting students out of the classroom, and communicating and collaborating with one another. It was a good getting-to-know-you activity that set me up for the rest of the semester in this course. It was also a reasonable task for the time allowed, although no prior warning meant that many students were not as prepared as they could have been, and had to complete the task at a later time.

Constructive Criticism

1) I felt that the assessment criteria for the course might have been much clearer - perhaps it would be helpful to future students if succint task outlines and marking rubrics were provided for each assessment item at the beginning of the semester. This applies especially to the weblog tasks: I found it very stressful to develop a blogging style that would satisfy requirements; feedback was also not available to those wishing to improve their results for the second set of blogs.

2) The role of students in the lectures was largely static, and the delivery one-sided. I have been fortunate enough to experience some highly engaging lecture styles during my studies, that succeeded in getting students out of their seats, raising their hands, asking questions, sharing their stories. I think this was partly due to the dynamic presentation skills of the lecturers, but also derived from the use of special guest lecturers, hands-on activities during lecturers, and the habit lecturers had of roaming around the theatre to oblige students to get involved.

3) Exciting as they were, I felt that many of the tutorial tasks/TuteSparks were a little too involved for the time allowed and the resources available to students within the classroom and at home.  I sometimes struggled to understand how the task was linked to the key course concepts and felt that the tutorial was largely a time for self-teaching rather than guided or collaborative learning. I would estimate that I spent more than twice the number of at-home study hours suggested for 20CP courses completing these tasks at home.