Foundation Skills/Welcome and course introduction/Your expectations

Your Expectations

If you have decided to keep a reflective journal, you may want to record expectations and what you hope to get out of the course. You can also do this when you introduce yourself on the Moodle discussion forum. Understanding what you want to achieve, means you need to identify what you already know about teaching. Try answering the questions in the following activity, and plan your learning goals. An example of reflecting on this and setting learning goals is given below. Once you have done this you are in a better position to develop a Personal Learning Plan - coming next.

Activity

How have your previous teaching and/or learning experiences influenced your expectations about teaching? What do you feel you are already good at doing as a teacher? How do you know this? What skills and knowledge would you like to develop the most? Write three learning goals. How will you know when you have achieved them?

Example of planning learning goals

This was written by Emilia. I spent five years as a part-time distance student studying mainly online. I learned to be very self-regulated and how to plan, monitor and evaluate my progress. I had little interaction with my fellow students and I missed learning with others. So when I had to teach online, I made sure that the course had a lot of opportunities for my students to interact with each other and share their work. I know I am good at encouraging students to interact with each other as I provide a lot of different ways for them to do this, for example, discussions on the forums, and real time tutorials. I also include activities that motivate them to share their work with others. Getting them to use blogs to post their work is working as they are giving feedback to each other. I would like to develop my knowledge about online pedagogies, in particular open Web 2.0 tools for facilitating learning. This is so that I feel confident in using these tools with students. My goals are to: Read some literature about using social media (Web 2.0 tools) for online teaching and facilitating learning. Explore some Web 2.0 tools for encouraging online sharing of information. Select at least three tools that I can use with my students and try them out. I will monitor and evaluate my achievement of these goals by setting a timeline, documenting what I am learning and by reflecting on my understanding and how well I am going at regular points.