Message no. 276 [Reply of: no. 272]
Author: John Griffith
Date: Sunday, April 8, 2007 3:22am
Claudia stated in her post: “The question that naturally arises is how much of the course should be
adapted to the students needs since every cohort may be different and
have different needs to attend. Other question is how valid is the data
collected to be materialized in a instructional change that benefits future
cohorts.”
Claudia,
I like your subject line question….”How important is the learner?” As
education moves online the learner takes on ever more “importance” and
the educational institution “less importance”. The learning program or
experience has to take into account a lot more of the individuality of the
learner, and cannot expect to “mold” the learner to fit the institutional
needs as much as in traditional learning. Or such is my opinion anyway.
I also like your statement about the validity of data collected as far as
guiding future changes. I wouldn’t be too surprised if our beloved
instructional cohort gets the lessons from 460 all wrong by paying attention
to “poor quality data” that they derive from our surveys and evaluations….
I’m not saying they will get it wrong, I’m just saying it would be EASY to get
the wrong idea because this data probably isn’t anywhere near complete
enough for any kind of objective analysis.
Frankly, probably the only thing really wrong about 460 was that it was a
16 week course squeezed in to 8 weeks. But that won’t stop them from
messing it all up because of the feedback and surveys and assuming the
problem was something other than too much in too little time. IMO.
So often, even in the “best” of “scientific studies” the data really isn’t as
good as those doing the study think. That’s one of the reasons we get so
much conflicting information about, for example, what foods are good for
you and what foods are bad for you. Truly reliable studies of human
behavior are extremely difficult to carry out!! You touch on this idea again
below…
“I see the challenges associated to conduct a learner analyses, primarily
because, it is limited to the capacity of conducting research in this area for
the institution in charge.
Although, Hanna, Glowacki-Ducka & Conceição (2000) recommend to use
entry-surveys and diagnosis at the beginning of the course, any
modification of the course design may imply the use of fresh resources for
evaluate and redesign courses and programs. Another limitation is the
analysis itself. That means how much analyses is possible to do if teachers
and instructors are not experts in psychology and students may do not
know well their own characteristics and limitations for being an online
learner.
These limitations may be extended to face-to-face settings too.”
I had to quote this because I really enjoy the name “Glowacki-Ducka”.
That name makes my day!!! But yes, how much analysis can we do if we
are not experts in analysis? How often are teachers going to get it all
wrong, and classify a student in the opposite group from what they really
are? Put a “likes structure” student in with somebody like me by mistake
for class project?
Disaster ensues! =^)
John
I can’t believe it, but I think I finished the assignments for this week. Wow,
and it’s only 3:15 am….I’ve got about 20 hours of free time until it’s time to
get started on the next lessons…I think I’ll spend the first 8 of those hours
asleep…and miss all the easter bunny stuff. Do rabbits even like colored
eggs? What’s that all about? I always kind of dropped my eggs off the
spoon into the dye cups, and cracked them, and the coloring got into them.
And I had those egg salad sandwiches of weird colors for my school lunches
for days afterwards… One time my dad hid an egg so well in our house we
didn’t find it until we “nosed” it about six months later…
