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.