Wednesday, June 30, 2010
8:30 AM-12:00 PM
Abstract:
This session will be of interest to all undergraduate and post graduate project supervisors. Get a first hand experience of being in a ‘twitter’ based community of learners. Witness how students and supervisors can benefit by using the “Cloud Learning Environment (CLE)” comprising of social software like ‘twitter and ‘Google Sites’ and ‘Google Docs’
Objectives:
*Introduce the participant with what is meant by Cloud Learning Environment.
*Discuss Issues common in undergraduate/postgraduate project supervision
*Highlight the underpinning Pedagogic theories relevant to project supervision
*Highlight the diversity in student approaches as well as supervisor approaches during project supervision
*Demonstrate how peer support can be fostered using Cloud Learning Environment which the student may already familiar with.
Discuss how the use of technology enhances the experience of both the student and the supervisor during the project supervision period.
Outline:
Participants will be asked to organise themselves into groups of suitable numbers. Each group will be given a Google and Twitter account to use for the session. A video will be shown that introduces participants to a few possible types of project students and some of the common issues they may face during their project. Each group will be asked to choose a type of student from what is shown in the video and post “tweets” (short twitter messages) as per the relevant script. Two laptops will be provided and all tweets from all participants will be collated using #tags and tweet aggregator software. One of the groups will choose to be the “supervisor” group and post tweets as per supervisor’s script on the main PC in the workshop room. There will also be exchange of personal learning logs between a supervisor and the students. The presenter will highlight some of the tools useful in project supervision that form part of the script.
The script is written to bring out the role of the supervisor as the facilitator of the online community who encourages resource and knowledge sharing between the students. The physical boundaries between the students and the supervisor are thus blurred by use of the CLE. The CLE give enough control to the students and the project supervisor making them both comfortable to use the tools for the project work. As all the groups post the messages they all see messages from each other and their supervisor. Once all the script messages are posted, there will be a discussion round both within the groups and with other groups and the presenters on the nature of the communication and the suitability of this in their project supervision practice.
Towards the end the all participants will help summarising the issues that they and their project students face. The presenter will attempt to map these issues to possible solutions using the two tools that we introduce in this session.
Prerequisites:
Project supervisor for undergaduate and postgraduate degree programmes.
People who supervise group work may also find the session useful.
People who are fed up with their Virtual Learning Environment and want to explore how they can create a Cloud based Learning Environment may also find the session useful.
Intended Experience Level:
Beginner
Instructor Qualifications:
MA Open and diatance Learning (The Open University UK) - 2007 onwards (ongoing p/t).
MSc Communication Systems and Signal Processing (University of Bristol UK) -2002
PgCERTin TL in HE (University of Portsmouth) 2005
BEng - Dr. BAMU Aurangabad, India 1999
Memeberships:
Fellow of Higher Education Academy UK
Memeber of Institution of Engineering and Technology
Awards:
National Teaching Award - HEA's Engineering Subject Centre, UK
University Learning and Teaching Fellow, University of Portsmouth.