Subject: discussion10
Author: A
It is very interesting to read Gagne’s nine events of instruction when I related it to my e-Learning experience. Since our class consisted of a good mix of students, fresh school leavers and working students, it would have been very interesting if there were less drop outs, especially when it comes to discussion forums given the different backgrounds of students in terms of knowledge, skills and experience on the course.
One of the problems that we faced was early drop outs of students from this course, especially first year students (fresh school leavers). I think this issue could have been addressed at the beginning of the training programme if the course instructor had tried to attract the learners’ attention to the course instructions (Event 1). Though the learning objective was very clear (Event 2), I think another reasons why most of the first year students dropped this program was the terminologies used because they had very little experience on the use of computers/internets. On the other hand, most working students had the advantage of taking this unit because of their experience on the software that they used at their respective organizations. Since there were no prerequisites for this course, I felt that the instructor should have motivated first year students at the beginning of the training and inform them that though they have no or little experience to the study of design and instruction of information systems, it was part of the training program (Event 3).
I also felt that since ‘Moodle’ was still at its infant stage at The University of the South Pacific at that time, management should have control over the number of students who enrolled for this course. Since, the course was conducted on a blended mode, I felt that it was too much load for our instructor to take on a class of 60 during tutorial sessions and try to give opportunities for each learners to extract the information or apply the skill (Event 6) and at the same time providing feed back to the students (Event 7).
Furthermore, I am not aware of the strategy that is being used at The University of the South Pacific to support self ? learning, and I think that it would be most appropriate to apply Gagne’s nine events of instructions.
Subject: Re: discussion10
Author: B
Hi A-san,
I am interested to know that though there were no prerequisites, do you think there were some entry conditions that needed to be satisfied so that it would be easy to 'recall entry conditions' (Level 3)?
You have mentioned several issues in relation to the various levels, but could you explain in your opinion 'an idea for improvement' to satisfy the various levels and whether it was a good idea to have it in a blended mode?
The reason why I ask is because I don't see anything concrete to suggest there was something wrong with the media used, the content or activities/ exercises to engage you as a learner. Did you get feedback from your assignments?
Did working students have a greater advantage over the school leavers?
Personally, did you feel satisfied upon completion of the course?
When you said that there was a lot of load on the instructor due to the class size- how do you think the class could have been managed?
Were the tutorials lab sessions or simply for discussion? Sorry for the questions but there are alot of grey areas, that would point out low levels of retention.
I dont think we can always blame it on the time period as being at an 'infancy stage'.