Edited by Kate Blackham, Tuesday, 15 Nov 2022, 12:47
I've been watching pre-recorded videos of other tutors' tutorials today, the ones described in:
Macdonald, J. and Campbell, A. (2012), Demonstrating online teaching in the disciplines. A systematic approach to activity design for online synchronous tuition. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43: 883-891. https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01238.x
Given that I see how other science tutors work already I thought I'd see how ALs in the humanities department work. Of course, there are lots of similarities - due to the lack of social presence (big word, means ability to tell that neither myself nor my students are robots) it's good to have lots of interactivity - otherwise the tutorial risks becoming a lecture. So things like:
Thumbs up/thumbs down to signal that they are happy, have done the task, etc.
Annotating whiteboards.
Using the video at specific points - reminds me of the visualizers we used in secondary school teaching.
Drag and drop activities
Then I thought I'd watch some videos from STEM that tackle issues I know I'll have in forthcoming tutorials. So my Staff Tutor has suggested I run a tutorial on algorithmic thinking (my students have to learn programming and many of them come in cold and get stuck with Python, they hobble along for the first TMA and then it isn't really assessed again until right at the end of the module - only about a third of the class even attempted the programming question in their final TMA). They just didn't even know how to begin, so I was thinking they needed extra support in acquiring algorithmic thinking and my Staff Tutor said I might as well do it. I'd have to do web sharing. Looking at a Computer Science tutorial has been really helpful as I've not been in a programming tutorial for SM123 yet. The old system allowed the sharing of software with the students - they can access the running software on my machine - whether this still works in the new system I'm not sure. Also perhaps they could do some high-level pseudocode type examples - just to understand what it is they need to do. Honestly, having spent 20 years editing GCSE and A level computer science books I think there's at least one topic missing from the module on doing all this.
Facilitating online groups - Day 2
I've been watching pre-recorded videos of other tutors' tutorials today, the ones described in:
Macdonald, J. and Campbell, A. (2012), Demonstrating online teaching in the disciplines. A systematic approach to activity design for online synchronous tuition. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43: 883-891. https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01238.x
Given that I see how other science tutors work already I thought I'd see how ALs in the humanities department work. Of course, there are lots of similarities - due to the lack of social presence (big word, means ability to tell that neither myself nor my students are robots) it's good to have lots of interactivity - otherwise the tutorial risks becoming a lecture. So things like:
Then I thought I'd watch some videos from STEM that tackle issues I know I'll have in forthcoming tutorials. So my Staff Tutor has suggested I run a tutorial on algorithmic thinking (my students have to learn programming and many of them come in cold and get stuck with Python, they hobble along for the first TMA and then it isn't really assessed again until right at the end of the module - only about a third of the class even attempted the programming question in their final TMA). They just didn't even know how to begin, so I was thinking they needed extra support in acquiring algorithmic thinking and my Staff Tutor said I might as well do it. I'd have to do web sharing. Looking at a Computer Science tutorial has been really helpful as I've not been in a programming tutorial for SM123 yet. The old system allowed the sharing of software with the students - they can access the running software on my machine - whether this still works in the new system I'm not sure. Also perhaps they could do some high-level pseudocode type examples - just to understand what it is they need to do. Honestly, having spent 20 years editing GCSE and A level computer science books I think there's at least one topic missing from the module on doing all this.