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The Aims - e(LATE)D TMA Stage 3

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My main aim - boost referencing ability for Level 1 students approve

  1. Referencing is a key study skill. I often see students get lower marks than their astute analysis deserves because they don't provide proper citation sad
  2. Referencing supports the academic 'voice', encouraging students to write:
  • Succinctly;
  • In a way that is directly engaged with the thinking and the evidence they are exploring;
  • With more authority.

A secondary 'affordance' - encouraging the students to do more forum posting.

This encourages student-student learning fostered by tutor support ('scaffolding'), rather than student-tutor learning.

Answers by other students, or the tutor, will refer to module materials where help on referencing can be found - encouraging better student-course content engagement, and better awareness of less obvious material in the course content.

The activity will support students in becoming independent deep learners, as Ken Bain recommends. cool

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light skinned mixed heritage woman writing letters.

Starting off - e(LATE)D TMA Stage 3

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Edited by Anita Pilgrim, Friday, 31 Jul 2015, 07:20

Luckily I had an activity in mind which I had long wanted to develop. I have always been passionate about teaching good referencing practice. (This is partly because it took me a long time to get my head around referencing!) I also love Forum posting.

Combine the two! What could go wrong. approve

Since I was mid-way through a module, I decided to test my lovely e-tivity live. approve

thoughtful well, that certainly was an interesting experience. As they say of e-teaching, serendipidous learning should be welcomed!

I teach in two cluster groups, so had the benefit of seeing how things go wrong work differently with different groups of students.

Group #1 - student immediately posts complicated secondary referencing example.

Group #2 - a student posts reflections on alphabetical listing in the full references, about which there is conflicting advice in the module materials. Another tutor and I cross-post (at the same time) further conflicting opinions and enter into a messy dialogue which may lead to students disengaging from the thread. 

Watch this space!!! wide eyes


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