A Long Day

Have just finished a 7 hour training program, and am left exhausted, tired and not sure what i have taken in today. Mind you there were breaks, lunch, tea with some nice chocolate biscuits - i liked the one that had some coffee taste. Anyway, the training today centered on how to make learning happen in lectures - nice topic.

OK, my lasting impression from all that was done today:

• A lot of students now use the Web 2 technologies (e.g. youtube, face book, delicious, etc.) and there is some mileage in trying to integrate these in their learning process - either by using some of these technologies in administering some of the course activities. However, this raises some issues in an academic environment like intellectual property rights, plagiarism etc.

My personal view point: It is important that educators are aware of such technologies and how these might improve students' learning experiences, but they also have a role to play in shaping the technologies that student can use to learn; not just running on the back on these 'commercial' social network technologies.

• Effective student learning in a lecture environment is a function of several factors including presentation style (too much or too little movement??), use of illustrations that students can relate to, adequacy of the physical layout of the learning environment (things like having the right equipments, and not having a cluster of equipments that might actually distract), encouraging peer interactions and general participation (get them to DO a task - a side thought: actually, it could help you manage time especially if you think you have too much of it and don't know what to do with it), providing feedback, reinforcing the need to learn, providing opportunity for digestion of information, use of visual aids like videos (if i get time to make one) etc.
  

It was all constructed around the model/concept of 'constructive alignment'.
There are host more details but am very tired now, i have two MSc dissertations to read and provide feedback on today, an article for a practitioner journal to contribute to, and another 7 hour session to face tomorrow, not to talk of not having spoken to my family etc etc. so i have to log off now.