Personal Blogs

Last night's session for E304 (Exploring English Grammar) was interesting.  The students coped well with what are quite complex concepts, related to mode.

It was noticeable that many of the students did not have working microphones and this poses some challenges for the teacher.  It makes getting feedback particularly slow.  Students can write in text boxes and I can see that a student is in the process or writing, it is hard to predict when they are going to finish writing and what they are likely to say.

I quite enjoy online tutorials but they are often very intense for the tutor as they need to think about what they are going to say as well as monitoring chat boxes, remembering who can be called on to speak (as they do have working microphones) and manipulating slides and working the whiteboard at the same time.

I had a tutorial yesterday that I thought was interesting for partly positive and partly negative reasons.

There were two students.  One said she was a "stay at home mum" and had a one year old at home and no microphone and the other said he needed to disappear at times to do answer some questions about his work. 

There were times when one or the other disappeared (they told me when this was happening) and I sometimes had to check that at least one of them was there; otherwise, I would have been speaking to myself. 

However, despite the unexpected nature of the set up, it seemed like a successful tutorial - one student said he understood some key content of the course at last (in an email sent later) and the other student seemed happy with it.  Of course, this might just be politeness but she asked many questions so seemed very engaged.

I suppose this shows how flexible we often have to be when teaching distance students as there are many things they are trying to juggle in their lives.  However, the unpredictability does not preclude opportunities for learning.

My contribution to the BBC "Go the Distance" course is now available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqfdrwx

An expanded (and probably more useful) version is available at Open Learn at

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/education/patrick-andrews-on-academic-talk

I have just come across the following website, which has useful information about dialects in the UK - MacKenzie, Laurel, George Bailey & Danielle Turton. 2016. Our Dialects: Mapping variation in English in the UK [Website]. http://tiny.cc/OurDialects. I found it at http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/

I was interested to see that "batch" is used for a bread roll not only in my birthplace of Coventry but also Liverpool.  It seems surprising that two cities that are quite separate should use the same word but I suppose there must have been some common origin.

As this is a relatively quiet part of the year with my OU teaching, I am working for the University of Reading with some university lecturers from China who are intending to teach through the medium of English from next year.  Their home institution specialises in architecture and most teach courses in related areas like engineering, urban planning and materials science.

The first day was spent finding out more about their needs and current levels of English.  Unsurprisingly, their levels of English (and confidence) vary quite markedly.  However, when I said I realised that many of them might feel they are stronger at reading and writing, their relief was palpable.  I also tried to reassure the group that many of them will feel much more confident at the end of the course.

I am looking forward to finding out more about the group and how we can help them to feel confident about what will be quite a daunting change to their practices.

I have started studying a MOOC on English as a Medium of Instruction for Academics (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/emi-academics/1/todo/8341)  The first week has been interesting in seeing the variety of concerns that practitioners have.

It is also good to see that the course makes heavy use of input from Kristina Hultgren, who works for the OU.  This shows how this university is doing important work in the field of Applied Linguistics.

I am interested in the use of English as a medium of instruction and the following link is to an article criticising the widespread use of English in Dutch universities (estimated at 60%)

https://qz.com/992742/dutch-universities-are-accused-of-abandoning-their-own-language-to-attract-lucrative-foreign-students/

I am currently writing some materials for a SPOC (Short Private Online Course) on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) on the theme of technology.  I have been very busy doing it for the last two days (this posting is an attempt to clear my head in the middle of doing it).

One thing I have noticed is that some days the kinds of tasks I write are very different from the ones of the day before.  For example, yesterday I was using a number of tasks where learners work things out for themselves (inductive) whereas today I have been explaining more and asking learners to then try exercises (deductive).

I wonder whether the mixture is confusing or helpfully varied.  This will be something to think about as I consider revising the materials when they are finished.

I attended the AL development event in Bristol this weekend.

The first session looked at how the OU is shown in some online videos made by ex-students.  These were an interesting view of how students see the experience.  One was made by a young woman who was very positive and she expressed how hard she had to work and that although she had the chance to attend tutorials, she never had the time. 

The second session was led by David Knight and he was given quite a hard time by ALs who felt they were undervalued and that some changes are imposed too quickly.  He was brave to come in some ways and coped as well as could reasonably be expected considering the disquiet about OU management.

The smaller sesions were both good and I went to a session on academic practice/plagiarism and one on mental health.  I particularly felt that the session on mental health was thought provoking.  It was pointed out that most mental health conditions are a matter of reporting and that many might be undiagnosed.

I have been writing some materials for an online course and have been experimenting with the online mindmapping tool  http://mindmapfree.com/

So far, I have found it easy to use and think it could be useful for many students.

It seems that the Group Tuition Policy has led to quite a lot of students signing up to tutorials but the number that attend seems not to have changed.  For example, for a tutorial last night, I had more than 10 on my list of attendees but only 3 attended - a similar number to the same tutorial last year.

Few issues seem to cause more angst among some students than the issue of word counts.

Some modules have assignments that state "a maximum of X words" or "write no more than X words" but students still tend to ask if they can have 10% extra.  Some seem surprised when I say that the words "maximum" and "no more than..." mean what they say.

The following clip provides a good explanation of process types although, of course, there is not really enough context for the types and explanation of ambiguous types.  However, students on courses like E304 and E852 might find it useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sOJy4nOwKo&feature=youtu.be