Tag - worksheets

E-Courseware Design: Issues

5th January 2009
Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, Observations, Teacher Skills
2 min read

Let me list some of the topical issues that keep emerging and need to be addressed asap.

  • usability – what I mean here is all the extra clicks that either my students or I make, which takes time. Distributing courseware in space often results in learners’ having to spend more time online than they would otherwise have, and that should be avoided.
  • feedback – it is not enough to provide feedback, it also has to be easy to locate your comments and respond to them, i.e. there is a need for greater interactivity in this respect
  • note-taking – I’ve recently described an ideal e-notebook, now I have to put my ideas into practice
  • archiving – this is an issue with longer courses, because your online learning space tends to get really crowded and something needs to be done with older materials: it is unwise to delete them, but it is very inconvenient to keep them up front, because they slow you down when you want to read the latest course news. Scrolling down to the most recently added worksheets and other materials also starts taking more time than you can possibly afford.

Pet Peeves

25th September 2007
Learning Language Teaching, Observations, Teacher Skills
1 min read

I guess everyone has got a few pet peeves. Mine are marking creative writing assignments submitted by my students and having to take a smelly tram home (the latter can only be avoided if I choose to walk or take a taxi instead, both of which I quite often do, especially the latter when it’s freezing cold outside). Another thing that drives me up the wall is that I can’t make myself throw away all those thousands of leftover handouts – I am a terrible hoarder.  Some of those date back to the mid 1990s. It’s time I really did something about them – now it looks like I have to buy a few bookshelves to accommodate a dozen ring-binders and about as many cardboard boxes that are scattered all over my place.  I seems I have to catalogue everything, too:( – I feel like hiring a PA at times.  Lastly, I absolutely hate plastic carrier bags. Can’t say why for sure, though. They just annoy me ever so much.