In Sessions 1 and 2, we have focused on explaining the background to our organisation model, Future Shape of the winner, and having the students study it and get used to articulating the main features of the model.
In Session 3, we want to move on to have students start the process of integrating FSW into their existing practice. We decided to prompt this thinking by setting some background reading on how the model connects with other well known management theories, and then to explain three case studies which outline the way that we have integrated the model into our practice. These case studies elicited a number of questions, that were at quite a practical level, and indicated to me that students were putting themselves in the position of using the model and having to make sense of its findings. One contacted me after the Web Tutorial with the following comment:
"This is becoming a lot clearer in my mind and am getting a lot of confidence!"
This seems to be an example of someone discovering how to integrate this new knowledge into their existing knowledge bank.
I remain uncomfortable with medium of the webinar platform, and am not convinced that it is the best for presenting data. And whilst the telephone contact enables us to have discussions and answer questions, it is still an imperfect way of judging the audience reactions to the material.
However, the benefit of the teleconference is that the community of the programme is beginning to strengthen, and students are showing an obligation to each other to contribute. Being honest, the mindset that is probably the most important to shift is that of the tutors, including myself, whose background is almost entirely face to face training. Becoming comfortable with a style of teaching that relies much more on the learner to make sense of the material is difficult, and may not at the outset feel so personally rewarding, but is essential in the Distance Learning arena.
By the end of this first programme, I aim to be able to map the key learning inputs that are essential for the programme, and find ways of delivering that material through a more suitable medium; podcasts, videocasts, quizzes ...etc. And I would want to identify which are the most important subjects for discussion. Setting up activities that engender the right discussions will be the next challenge.
But all in all, we are managing to have the right conversations, and the confidence our students are developing for the material is most heartening.
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