Feedback

Some useful feedback from Mike Carbarles

By the way I tried out the recording and noticed that when you go to breakout rooms, there's deadly silence. If you want to make this more marketable, I suggest you try leaving a few students in the main room for the recording.

Actually, I should appologize. When I opened my mic there was a lot of echo. That's because I was being lazy - using my laptop built in mic and speaker. so the sound was feeding back out of the built in speaker and into my built in mic. You should specify in the signup process that a headset with mic is absolutely necessary. Not only should it reduce background noise, but also eliminates the "talkback radio with the radio on" effect(which happened when I spoke).


Hope that is useful for future.

Ch.. Ch.. Ch... Changes....

'Keep it simple, stupid' might be a good thing to think about.  It's interesting how teaching the evening group (who are largely pre-celta trainees of the type I envisaged would do the course) is quite a different expereince to the afternoon group (largely overseas, post celta/ interested in the course/ know the grammar).  The session yesterday was much too easy, no challenge for them (of course!) and not very satisfying for me.  Tonight it was much slower, and I've gone back to simplify my input, put continuous (easier) before perfect aspect (more tricky) and to take out the slides I had on 'When isn't it perfect/ continuous?' looking at gerunds, participle clauses, -ing adjectives etc.  This is just too much for them.  They are really struggling with getting the basics.  More can come later.

On the technical side, the breakout rooms are better now, and I've adjusted my mike so that the sound is better.  I feel as if I'm getting to know them a bit, but I need a little profile of them near me, I think.  I might ask them to send me a pic, too....

Motivation

Only three people showed up last night (although I had an apology from one other).  I think that that is another one of those differences between an on-line class and one you have to commit to going to - because the barrier is lower in terms of easily being able to go, it's also psychologically easier to miss it.  I had the same experience when the Virtual Round Table conference rolled around - I had had it in my diary for months - I really wanted to go to some of the sessions - thought it wasa great idea.... and in the end didn't find the time to do it, life got in the way.

Not sure if this will be different if people have paid for it... I also think that perhaps I should allow the link to be available for, maybe a week after the session.  A limited time will (perhaps) make people make time to watch it if they want to.  If you know it's available indefinitely, do you ever do it....

Breakout rooms

This continues to be a journey of discovery.  I've explored the idea of using the timer when learners are in the breakout rooms, but what if they have finished before - Michael had a good idea today, to put a tick up when they have finished so that I can see.  I'm going to try that.

Maybe I need to put together a video or a 'do's and 'don't's of the virtual classroom and how to use it (including that).  It's also really annoying if people leave their microphones on if they are not speaking - it makes it all very echo-y.

Getting good feedback from people and feel as if I'm settling into the medium a bit more, especially as I get to know people a bit better. 

Feedback on breakout rooms

Hi Jo,

    It was fun being there with you. No doubt, the lesson was way too elementary, but i guess that was just the beginning. What I didn't enjoy is getting into rooms to discuss. Can we not just discuss it together? Getting into rooms is a waste of time as we all are just trying to talk or trying to listen if someone else is talking. I did go through the worksheet- its good , but am not sending it back to you. 

Also, i might not be there for the Thursday session due to last minute change. I might join in a bit later than the scheduled time. 

See you soon.

Tejashree

Thoughts from me - fewer breakout sessions? for longer?  in pairs, not groups?

First session in Pilot 2!

Just finished the first session on the 'big' pilot.  A bit wierd because I don't know people, I have to say - a bit impoersonal - it's better in the breakout rooms.  Still, 10 people came plus one of the trainers who is interested popped in.  The big thing is just that there still is too much information in that frst session  it took an hour and a half and couldn't have been done in much less.  It would be good to ignore articles, but they're so important.  Could they be moved to the third session? 

Working blind, as it were, it's difficult to judge the level that people are at. Big difference between this and f2f is that you can't easily tell how easy/ difficult they are finding it.....

I sent out a quick review type homework (two sentences to parse) afterwards, and I thik that's a helpful idea.