Goal 3.2- Who is the student and The 3 steps of meaningful feedback- Give, receive, change

When approaching an online course, the system often had a previous expectancy of who the learner will be. As expected, this person is expected to be autonomous, but rather than believing “learners need to know that they must learn what the teacher teaches if they want to pass and get promoted” (Dooley, 2003) they also must be aware of their learning because “learners are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make regarding what they will learn” (Dooley, 2003) When talking about distance courses, there is a problem that exists from the bare beginning of such method, and that is that  sometimes the student enrolled does not fulfill the requirements to be an online student. Regardless of this, “they will use their life experiences and common sense to facilitate learning” (Dooley, 2003)  because this is a common instinct in the process to acquire meaningful learning. The theory seen in class must always down on a practical situation since “learners learn best when the educational process occurs in the context of real life-situations” (Dooley, 2003) Taking these features into consideration, the online student is an independent being who is only guided by the teacher. Although “they are motivated by internal motivators” (Dooley, 2003) this does not mean the instructor of such course does not have any responsibility or direct relationship with the student.

The first thing the teacher can do to improve the learners’ experience is providing feedback. “Feedback on the distance learning programme takes a number of forms” (Howard, 1995)  but here the topic being regarded is not the grades themselves, but giving the students an opinion of how their worked has tuned out according to what they were asked for. This can help them know if the course is respecting the syllabus provided to them or not. There are occasions where the teacher does not have a rubric to follow, and so on, leaves ambiguous feedback to the student, lacking structure, and most importantly, meaningless. Through this feedback, the learner can now if the instructor is someone who can be trusted or not.

 Second, students must be allowed to leave early feedback about the course itself for the teacher to create a bond with them. In the same way a teacher judges the students’ development, students can provide the teacher feedback, as well. Sometimes the learners’ opinion is not taken into consideration and it is often expected for them to understand and respond to a class because it was made to suffice some standard needs. However, this is not the case. Each person is different, and each one of these learners has a way of learning. With this said, it can be concluded that a standard system of how a class would be developed is only a guide that organized the content that will be seen during classes, but this does not establish how they will be approached.

For this, student responses are expected, and are collected by three means:

·         Standard evaluation forms;

·         Unstructured reviews;

·         Detailed written feedback on selected extracts

(Howard, 1995)

Each one of these forms sends some kind of specific information about what the student thinks about the class. All of this feedback, although controlled, gives the learner an opportunity to express his feelings towards a course before it is too late to change anything.

Finally, after both teacher and students have evaluated each other, comes moment of change. Feedback means nothing if it is not used as the main tool to improve a course. If the feedback from both sides was accurate, the bond between the instructor and the class will be there. If not, this union must be fostered through the cooperation of each one of the parts involved. It is the moment to take any negative comments and adapt to the way a class in specific is developing to make it better for both the students and the teacher.

Works Cited

Dooley, L. D. (2003). Advanced Methods in Distance Education: Applications and practices for educators, administrators and learners. Texas: INFOSCI.

Howard, M. (1995). Distance Education for Language Teachers: A UK Perspective. Edinburg: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Goal 3.1 ¿Por qué necesita ayuda el alumno en un curso a distancia?

Notes:
Mainly, the student needs to acquire habits that will help him become autonomous. It is all a matter of teamwork and the teacher cannot expect the student to do everything on his own, and even less to know everything. That is the reason why the student is taking a course: He is learning. So on, the teacher must provide course-long assistance and be a permanent guide. With this help, the learner can develop his competencies furthermore instead of only staying with the same information or abilities he already has.


Overall, we can see it is a 50/50 situation. Both teacher and students have to do their part. As many of us will be able to recall, we indeed have had courses were the teacher has played a terrible 5% leaving practically all the work to us -- and this person was not even able to grade us back in time. Let's all agree that we do not want to be this kind of teacher in the future. We must do our job and be the facilitator that will guide the student to improve in all that he is and he does.
Everyone is different, and so, we all have different  ways of thinking, which will result in people perhaps misunderstanding instructions, assignments, or in some occasions needing more time to complete a task. Therefore, the teacher must be present to help each student -- if possible-- according to their needs.

Goal 2.2 Presentation

 As teachers, we must make an effort to promote autonomous learning. Most of the time, this will be done implicitly by the way we approach our students and how we present the course to them.
We must be aware that being autonomous is not something spontanous the learners will acquire out of nowhere. The teacher is the main promoter of this behaviour, however, sometimes  how to help the student aquire this is not clear.
Here are some suggestions that can help the teacher with this task.


Presentación EAD 2.2

Goal 2.2 : Promoting autonomous learning

Virtual education has to be student friendly to promote autonomous learning.  The content that will be seen during the course must be structured and easy to follow as well as contain clear instructions. The whole environment of an online class is conformed by the teacher, the activities, the deadlines and the learners. Here, the teacher is a facilitator that must show constant a meaningful support to the student. In the same way, this facilitator should not expect the learners to work with little or no support at all. Such behavior will result in stressed people who feel forced to work simply to obtain a grade regardless of their learning.

However, the teacher is not responsible for everything. The student must also possess some abilities for this system to work as a whole. He must know he is expected to be autonomous and keep track of his own learning.  He should be able to find resources to complement his knowledge throughout the course and have contact with the rest of the class in case something is not clear.

With each part working, almost like a big clockwork, it will be easier for the learner to organize.