Showing posts with label FSWDL Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FSWDL Project. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 March 2011

Addendum to "When Social Cues are Absent" Post

Having gone on to read Walther's (2006) paper on Non verbal dynamics in computer-mediated communication, I now realise that the dynamics I was describing in my previous post relate closely to the Hyperpersonal and Social information Processing Theories.

The important elements of Hyperpersonal theory to these sensitive exchanges are that the sender has been deciding precisely how much and what type of information they are sending to us. "Senders, in the process of message construction, engage in selective self presentation to a degree not afforded in FtF interaction." In situations, such as the example I gave, this gives a damaged person much more space, time and control in sharing their feelings with someone else. The anonymity of the electronic setting has, over time, led to what Walther describes as "greater self disclosure", which in a befriending situation such as this is precisely the intensity of communication we are seeking.

SIP throws more light on the subject: "it may take more messages, over a longer time, to imbue exchanges with sufficient information for participants to decode and aggregate in order to construct impressions and manage relationships." In this case, because the sender was providing very short, sharp, often pointed replies, it was possible over 45 or so emails to build up a picture of the hurt they were feeling. Capital letters, outbursts in reply to questions, emoticons and the use of other punctuation, all painted a vivid picture of the emotional state of the sender. 

All of which goes to show that "CMC users adapt affective meaning to their usage".

Although some colleagues find email a difficult medium for such sensitive 'conversations', I have heard from users of the service that the anonymity afforded by email has enabled them to share feelings they would never have been brave enough to share either in a face to face or a telephone setting. It's sad to hear that this is the case, but what a good thing it is that there is now an outlet for such extreme emotions.




Walther, J.B. (2006) ‘Nonverbal dynamics in computer-mediated communication, or :( and the net :( ’s with you, :) and you :) alone’ in Manusov, V. and Patterson, M.L. (eds) Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage. (Accessed 24th March 2011)

Monday, 3 May 2010

FSW Distance Learning Second Programme May 2010

Having run the first consultants DL programme in October 2009, there are a number of improvements that I want to incorporate in the second version, which begins on 10th May 2010.

The overall purpose of the programme is to create an extra route to market for our consulting tool, the Excellence Audit. This means that our training programme has three important strands; firstly to introduce and explain the key features of our Future Shape of the Winner Model and Excellence Audit; then to help consultants to work out how the model connects with, and hopefully strengthens their existing consulting practice; finally to help them to identify the client situations in which the model can be of most use and to consider how they can promote its use to these prospects.

On the first programme, I was not clear enough in my own mind about these three different learning objectives.

In effect, this is a progression from articulating meaning right through to making new meaning. On our first programme, one consultant has most successfully made this transition, with another two who are making progress. We would like to improve that performance on the second programme.

In creating the learning plan for Programme number 2, I will encourage participants to create their own learning journal, hopefully on their own blog, and will set assignments that draw attention to these three different strands of the Programme.

It will be most interesting to see whether I can persuade this group of mature professionals to keep a blog record of their reflections, but of the seven participants, three already have their own blog, and two of these three are enthusiastic users of blogging. I am hoping that their example to the rest of the group will encourage others to join in. I have tried to replicate my H808 experience, where an e-portfolio was a required element of the ECA, by pointing out to participants that the blog can be evidence of learning which can be included in their submission for accreditation.

I also plan to use the Elluminate Web Platform for the first time on the Programme. This will be an improvement on the previous Webinar platform that we have used, as it has a number of useful educational features, such as a whiteboard, breakout rooms, a session planner, recording and polling. It also has an audio feature which allows group discussions during a session. The educational features offer us the change to shift from a largely transmission approach to include more interaction. An option we plan to experiment with on programme 2 is to provide some of the inputs in a podcast format, again freeing up web tutorial time for discussions and questions.

The use of this platform seems very 'lumpy' at the moment, but will doubtless get smoother as we become more familiar with the technology. In order to iron out any basic sound or technology issues, we have scheduled an introductory session for all participants to try out the web platform before our first full session.

I am very pleased that we maintained the discipline on Programme 1 of writing scripts for the four web tutorials. Although we will make changes to these, we can go back to a basic structure that has run smoothly. I see that the Elluminate platform has a Planner feature which enables you to set up your session including your script, slides and choreographed actions on the web platform. I plan to begin simply with mainly script, slides and audio discussions, but to experiment with the whiteboard and breakout rooms in later sessions, assuming all goes to plan;-)

Lots to think about, but it is most exciting to have the chance to go again with the benefit of H808 in the forefront of my thinking.

Sunday, 24 January 2010

What next after H808?

Having hacked my way through my toughest ever OU Masters Module, H808, I was delighted with how much of my learning seems to be transferrable to our own Future Shape of the Winner Distance Learning Programme.


There are several different angles which I hope to apply.


Point One: the fact that our learners are so varied in their backgrounds and experience, and also have different reasons for wanting to do the Programme might seem to make the design of a generic programme very tricky. However, this ought to be where the 'distance learning' element comes into its own. If we can get the right structure and the right support material, the differences could be a strength not a weakness. I found the H808 focus on creating a Professional Development Plan (PDP) was a very useful way of encouraging students to set their own framework for their learning. Providing our students with a FSW skills/knowledge template to help them create a PDP structure for FSW is well worth considering. Not only will that focus the students, but it will also give tutors the chance to tailor their inputs/discussions to respond to the objectives of our students. The process of creating that template will be a good discipline for us, as it will make us consider the key dimensions we are aiming to communicate. The PDP discipline may also give us the scope to get academic accreditation for the programme, which would add to its attractiveness to potential students.


Point Two: the 'invisibility' of what learning was taking place on the programme seems to be a weakness. Three months after the end of the first programme, we find ourselves with only one student actively using the Excellence Audit, and we are not in a position to pinpoint what - if anything - is missing from the programme. In my TMA1 I wrote the following:


Moon (2001) outlines a hierarchy of stages of learning; “noticing; making sense; making meaning; working with meaning; transformative learning” (P6). The further up this hierarchy that learners progress, the deeper the learning and the more the learner is able to apply the new meaning creatively in their own situation. Citing the research of Marton, Hounsell and Entwhistle, (1997) Moon (2001) reports “A deep approach is where the intention of the learner is to understand the meaning of the material. She is willing to integrate it into her existing body of previous ideas, and understandings.” (p5). Moon (2001) recommends reflection skills as being key in generating this deep learning.


Being able to track our students' progression through noticing, making sense, making meaning, working with meaning, transformative learning, would give us a fantastic insight into how they were getting on with their learning. Therefore, I am considering two revisions. 1. Changing the accreditation conditions to include the requirement to submit a learning log of their reflections throughout the programme. 2. Encouraging/requiring? the learning log to be kept as a blog, which will allow all the students access to each others' reflections, but also will help tutors to track progress, and make adustments as needed to programme content etc.


Point Three: A major H808 insight was around the overall pedagogy of the programme, which I now recognise is heavily influenced by the face to face bias that all the tutors have. There is still a strong desire for us to tell the students what we think they need to know, rather than encouraging them to explore and make sense of the ideas, and to work out how they might use them. I believe it would be unwise to attempt to make a U turn in pedagogical thinking, not least because we have very limited experience in this more participative virtual approach. So I think a good step forwards would be to convert all of the presentations which we made during the web tutorials into podcasts. These will be incorporated in the pre-work ahead of web tutorials, and the telephone conference will be a chance to discuss and reflect collectively - a much more participative way of using the synchronous forum.


In summary, if I can convince my colleagues that these three modifications to our approach are worth trying, I believe we will have a great deal more insight into the extent to which students are getting to grips with the new knowledge, and this will hopefully enable us to support them more actively in becoming active users of the FSW model.

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Core Activity 10.1 Wikis in Our Practice

Learning and Teaching Committee Report

By Madeleine McGrath, 15th January 2010 

Background
The Future Shape of the Winner™ is a new organisation model, designed by Tom Peters Company for use with our own clients. The model, and its accompanying audit instrument, the Excellence Audit, began in 2009 to attract the attention of independent consultants from all over the world, who requested the chance to be trained and accredited as users of the audit and the model. Having identified a group of 8 consultants who were willing to sign up for the pilot programme, we ran our first programme in October 2009. Since the participants came from five different countries, and had many differences in background, education, language etc, a distance learning format was not only the only affordable option, it was also the most effective learning approach.

Whilst there has been much enthusiasm from the students of the first programme, we find ourselves, some two months after the training has finished, with only one student having been able to convince a customer to commission an Excellence Audit. Whilst others may yet have success in this endeavour, the absence of any structured evidence of their learning has emerged as a weakness in the design of this course. As we look ahead to the next course, this paper proposes the incorporation of technologies that will encourage the more public articulation of learning, and will generate deeper learning amongst all participants. 

Current practice
The FSW Distance Learning Programme has been designed and facilitated by a team of tutors whose grounding in teaching took place before the digital era. As a result, the bias of the delivery has tended towards what Ferris & Wilder (2006) would describe as the Print Model of education, with the teacher as expert from whom the students learn. They observed, "instructors continue to equate the authority and ownership of knowledge with the teacher, who controls the text, whether print or electronic, rather than with the learners" Unfortunately in this case, once the classroom training is completed, the success of the programme is dependent on the learners taking ownership of the knowledge and applying it in their own context. So far the evidence is that this transfer has not yet taken place in all but one of the students. 

The existing programme has a substantial written Practitioners Guide, a blog-site on which students are encouraged to contribute to blog threads on the various subjects covered during the programme, four two hour synchronous web tutorials, and pre and post tutorial activities. The final step in the training process is for trainees to participate actively in their first Excellence Audit having sold it to a client of their own. During the course of the audit they will be mentored by one of the course tutors. 

On the first programme, the eight students all attended and participated fully in all four web tutorials, and completed their assignments as requested. All professed themselves very pleased with the training, and had few suggestions for improvement of any substance. However, we are not aware of how well students are able to articulate their learning at this critical half way point in the training. Articulation of their learning is critical for two reasons; firstly, of course, because this is an essential step in making the progression through to deep learning, but secondly, and more importantly, because unless they can convincingly articulate their learning, they will be unable to sell this approach to their own clients.

As we consider ways to make the training more effective in future iterations of the programme, my recommendation is to experiment with a number of design and technology modifications that encourage students to articulate their learning on a more frequent basis, and to document their discoveries throughout the entire course of the training programme. This will enrich their learning, but equally importantly will provide tutors with much greater visibility of how learners are progressing. Shifting more strongly into the digital domain also provides us with the opportunity to encourage greater learner ownership of the material, and to encourage learners to shape the learning activities to suit their own situations.

Greater use of blogging as a domain for individual reflective commentary is one obvious way to shift the focus of the training. Requiring all students to create and keep a reflective commentary on their learning throughout the programme would be a straightforward modification to make, and one which immediately makes more visible the learning that is taking place. This is likely to be uncontroversial for both learners and tutors.

The use of a Wiki or some kind of shared workspace is a second, maybe less obvious option to consider. In the next section I will describe the potential benefits of this technology, and how its use can be piloted in the next programme. The potential issues that are may arise will also be considered.

Recommendation
Ferris & Wilder (2006) describe the wiki as "collaborative Web-based sites with "open editing"." The collaborative activity that is enabled in the wiki-type environment generates interaction and can lead to the creation of strong communities that share a common interest. 

The structure of the wiki is relatively simple, and it can be used in many different ways. Lamb (2004) suggests using them for creating agendas, note taking in group sessions, informal bulletin boards. Ferris & Wilder (2006) see enormous potential for collaborative learning, and suggest joint problem solving, brainstorming and group tasks. Duffy et al (2006) recommend their use for collaborative authorship and writing and point out that the feature of being able to trace the contributions of all participants encourages participation.

Lamb (2004) observes that whilst the lack of structure in a wiki can make it feel disorganised, it also leaves space for learners to make their own links and to organise it for themselves. As well as learning about the subject matter, this also requires groups to work out processes that will enable them to work together. In the longer term, this experience can build a community of users who continue to network as they become experienced users of this approach.

In this programme, we have found significant variability in the technology skills of students. I am therefore recommending that we introduce the use of the wiki progressively, beginning with some simpler tasks, such as generating questions or agenda items for the next meeting, or perhaps by inviting students to add comments to an existing wiki page. We should then re-locate one or two of the existing private study activities to the wiki area, providing us with the chance to discover who is engaging actively in their study. One such activity would be the analysis of the audit results. Rather than just being given a real set of results to study, those results could be posted on some wiki pages, and the group challenged to discuss and agree the main issues uncovered by the audit results. Ideally, as their competence and confidence improves, it would be good to be able to set a final collaborative task for the whole group to pull together their individual and collective learning. The creation of their own slide presentation to explain the approach in their words and terms is one such possibility.

In the true spirit of the wiki, however, learners should be encouraged to create learning projects and activities of their own as they grow in confidence with the subject, with each other, and with the wiki environment.

Issues
Several issues with the use of wikis have been referred to already; the reluctance of Print Paradigm professionals to engage with technology and the lack of structure being the most notable.

Duffy et al (2006) warn that those grounded in the print paradigm have an instinctive distrust of the wiki concept. They also advise that the maximum benefit is gained from wikis when students are allowed complete control of the environment. Both of these issues point to the need for a shift in the approach that tutors have been taking and for the careful application of appropriate pedagogy to exploit the benefits of the wiki environment.

The fact that the wiki is in a constant state of flux may frustrate both learners and tutors, and some may be offended by the interference from others in their text, or may run into disputes about the ownership of written material. However, the reality of the subject matter about which they are learning is that it is not a prescribed and defined model, but one that requires judgement, adaptation and flexibility. All of these features are modeled in the wiki environment.

Another frequent criticism of the wiki environment is the questionable acccuracy or truthfulness of the information presented. Ferris & Wilder (2006) point out that skills to judge the accuracy and reliability of sources of information are becoming critical for any users of the world wide web for data. Learning to operate successfully in a wiki environment could be seen as the chance to develop such skills. 

ConclusionThe ability to convert trainees from all parts of the globe into successful users of our Company’s Excellence Audit has massive potential as a completely new stream of business for our company. This makes the creation of a successful training programme an important priority. In the next iteration of this programme, one of the most important priorities has to be the surfacing of the learning of individual consultants. Increased use of blogs is one way to record and publish this individual learning.

Whilst the gradual introduction of the use of wikis is also a way of showcasing each students’ ability to articulate their learning, it is also a place in which we can introduce more complex group discussions and tasks, and through that, not only enhance individual learning, but also begin to create the extended learning community that we envisage as important for the future.

We need to be conscious of the potential reluctance of colleagues to embrace the new technology, but must remind them of the enormous payoff for us all if we are able to make a radical improvement in the learning performance of students.

References:
Duffy, Peter D. and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In: Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, 26 Sep. 2006, Brisbane.
Ferris, S. and Wilder, H. (2006) ‘Uses and potentials of wikis in the classroom’, Innovate, vol. 2, no. 5. Available from: http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol2_issue5/ (accessed 12th January 2010)
Lamb, B. (2004) ‘Wide open space: wikis, ready or not’, Educause Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October), pp. 36–48. Available from: http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp (accessed 11th January 2010)

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

Core Activity 9.1 Desktop Research into Blogs

In this activity, I studied several papers, visited Warwick University's Website and Blog listings, reviewed a number of Blog accounts on Blogger.com, and considered the Zoe Corbyn Times HE article. Several educational uses of blogging are:

Student
1.Reflection:
Individual maintenance of a blog to enhance reflective thinking. Students at universities like Warwick and the Open Univerisity are encouraged to keep a blog. These can be used to encourage reflective thinking, and to develop skills of self expression and articulation. "A blog offers interaction with reflective comments and also the ability to interlink to related ideas." (Duffy et al, 2006)

2.Organisation of Learning:
Some students find that the structure of blogs provides them with helpful functionality to organise their ideas. Brady (2005   ) reports "For some bloggers their blog is a way of keeping notes and useful URLs in an organised way." These functions are supported by the capability of tagging of blogs, as well as being able to hyperlink to other web based documents and blogs.

Issues:
In both of the above cases there are a number of potential pitfalls;
  • the public nature of the blog raises issues of confidentiality and privacy
  • learners may be reluctant/nervous to publish their thoughts
  • the learner must be able to cope with the technology/software
  • the learner must develop skills of self expression and articulation
Group
3. Collect/Give Feedback:
Where blogging is added as part of the course structure, as it is in the OU, students can be encouraged to comment on each others' work and to provide feedback. This enables them to learn critical review skills, and also to experience the use of peer review.

Issues:
However, the same learner reluctance that was mentioned in 1 and 2 above may well come into play. The use of blogs as part of a course requires an understanding on the teacher's part of the underlying pedagogical needs of the case. Duffy et al (2006) explain "Which tools are used by learners and teachers, and whether such tools will be used at all, will always depend on the specific pedagogical needs of a teaching situation."

Teacher
4. Additional Resources
Some teachers use their blog to post additional information and references that emerge as being of interest from class or online discussions. In blogs such as Peter Smith's Logic Matters blog http://www.logicmatters.net/, lecturers share their latest research and engage in discussions with readers. As well as providing a forum for academic expression, this application of blogging enables teachers to model good practice in blogging to their students.

Issues:
One potential issue with this use of blogs is that a teacher may be concerned about falling foul of the politics of their academic institution, by expressing ideas that are judged inappropriate
Other academics are anxious that original research will be plagiarised by others.
In order to be willing to engage in this practice, academics require technology skills

5. Supervision
In courses in which students use blogs to record their learning, teachers are in a position to conduct formative assessment of students' work. I have myself experienced the benefit of timely and focused tutor comments on my published work, enabling much swifter lessons to be learned.

Issues:
Students who sense that their work is being checked may be more reluctant to express opinions

And in conclusion.....
The explosion in the use of blogs in every aspect of life (personal, corporate, political, journalistic etc) makes their use in education increasingly compelling. "It could be argued that it is the connective and contributive attributes of blogging that has caused it to spread so virally throughout the web" (Brady, 2005) The speed of their take up seems to be turning them increasingly into an everyday tool of reflection, and as educators, we are likely to miss a trick if we do not wrestle with the incorporation of blogging into our pedagogy.





Brady, M. (2005) 'Blogging: Personal participation in public knowledge-building on the web.' In 'Participating in the knowledge society: Researchers beyond the university walls'. R. Finnegan. London, Palgrave Macmillan.
Duffy, Peter D. and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In: Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, 26 Sep. 2006, Brisbane.

Farmer,J. and Bartlett-Bragg, A. (2005) Blogs at anywhere: High fidelity online communication, ASCILITE, www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/22_Farmer.pdf (accessed 10th January 2010)

Monday, 14 December 2009

E-Learning Design - Reflections

The work on H808 TMA 2 made me go back over some of my H802/H804 reading and has reminded me - gulp - of the shift in teaching focus that is offered by the online medium. Prensky and Schank are strong advocates of a learner centric approach to education.

Although in the back of my mind, I was already aware of this, I now realise that the Distance Learning programme that I have just recently delivered to 8 consultants has, at its core, a transmission approach to teaching. Our Web Tutorials had at least 50% of the time devoted to making presentations of materials, which, to be frank, may have felt uninspiring to the audience.

In version 2, I am considering converting some of these sessions into podcasts, which students can listen to in their own time. The Tutorials could be devoted to conversations about the implications and practicalities of the information provided in the podcast, and other background reading.

However, a much more learner centric model is provided by the Carnegie Case Study which I chose in Activity 6.1. If I were to follow Elizabeth Barklay's approach, I would define a number of learning outcomes, and then offer students a variety of exercises/activities to achieve this learning. Whilst this would be a major undertaking in the short term, if we could achieve the increased volume of students that were achieved in the study, the effort would be well worth it;-)

My most significant challenge in the new course design will be with my colleagues, who are all professionals who are genuine experts in the transmission mode of teaching. I am not sure how wholeheartedly they will embrace my proposals.

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

EC: Web Tutorial 4 Some random thoughts

The fourth and final FSW web tutorial focused on the Excellence audit results and how to interpret them. As pre-work, delegates were all asked to complete the audit themselves, so that they could understand the experience their clients will be going through. They were also provided with results from  a real audit, and were asked to read through the practitioners guide section on the audit, and to begin to work out how they would interpret the data.
From the outset, it was clear that a couple, notably Gary and Berta, had spent time studying the data. Others may well have done the same, but did not speak out so confidently in the discussions.
The content delivered by us was quite significant, and I am still very thoughtful about whether this was the best way to deliver the material. For those who had studied the case study, it was probably fine, but others may have been a bit overwhelmed.
The dilemma over whether we should present any content in the webinar format is still on my mind. We will be issuing feedback questions to investigate the experience of the learners, and I am most interested to explore this question. There is no doubt that the students are hungry for input, but I am wondering whether that input needs to be more driven by their questions than by our description of our model.

Monday, 26 October 2009

H808 E-Portfolio: Web Tutorial 3 Review


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.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

FSW DL Reflection tool (1)

In an earlier blog posting (Reflecting on Reflection, 2nd October 2009), I described a moment of realisation about my own professional practice. I have tended to assume that allocating time for my students to reflect assumes that they will know how to reflect. My research around the subject of reflection has given me pause for thought on that subject.

I decided this week, to provide some extra scaffolding for reflection on the Web Tutorial. On this session, all students had been asked to prepare a five minute input summarising their learning on a section of the course manual (Practitioner's Guide). Listening to any subject tackled 8 times can be both tedious and challenging; I therefore provided a Reflection Tool for everyone to use if they chose. The tool listed all the names of students, and invited the listener to record their answers under three headings; features benefits that they focused on, powerful images/phrases, ideas to incorporate into your pitch, any questions.

Students have been invited to contribute to a blog discussion following that session, and I will be fascinated to see if there any good evidence of listening and reflection.

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

H808 E-Portfolio: Web Tutorial 2 Review

The second web tutorial in our series of four took place on 19th October. Students had been assigned pre-work of studying five sections of the Practitioners Guide describing the Future Shape of the Winner organisation model and prepared a five minute input to describe the features that they judge to be unique.

This exercise allowed us to judge their early grasp of the model and also to get a sense of their presentational capabilities, albeit in the limiting arena of a teleconference.

We audio recorded this conference, which provided my colleague and I with the opportunity to review the inputs of students, and make a more considered assessment of progress.

Two had clearly developed an excellent understanding of the model and were able to relate the model to their existing mental models around organisations. Four showed good understanding being able to articulate the model well, and two, both native Spanish speakers were more limited in their grasp.

In one case, this may be due to the student's poor spoken english; this student's presentation showed signs of his questioning whether the model can truly be useful in his practice. In the coming weeks, I must monitor the situation with both students, to decide whether additional learning support is required.

Today's review will support my PDP in two areas; Assessment and Awareness of Students. In carrying the review out with my colleague, I was also improving our collaboration on e-learning.

Memo: Extracts from PDP Goals which are being addressed in this activity
This is the first programme that we have developed in this field. I will work with colleagues, and research best academic practice to establish the criteria against which we will judge the performance of our learners.


I will engage my colleagues in the assessment process, which will give me a benchmark to judge my own assessment competences.