Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1676] RE: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 235
From: Adamson (adamson46844@mni.ne.jp)
Date: Sun 20 May 2001 - 22:54:21 MEST
From: "Adamson" <adamson46844@mni.ne.jp> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1676] RE: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 235 Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:54:21 +0900
M. Yasar Ozden gives us a plea for ideas on how to improve the use of CALL
tools in his class. I think that his problems are probably quite symptomatic
of a whole area of usage. He offers class notes, which are probably accessed
by at least some of the students, but the chat and forum opportunities are
seldom used. I am not surprised. List discussions seem to depend on some, as
yet vaguely defined, measure of interest or popularity of the subject. In my
experience there is little relation to the practicality of the subject or of
possible answers, it is the, shall we say, sexiness of the subject. If the
subject is sexy, there will be a huge follow of messages. But more mundane
or practical subjects will have little traffic. This discussion is a case in
point. The subject probably effects many of the members of the list, but it
is drawing few comments.
Now, turning to my personal ideas on Professor Ozden's plea. I think that
the
first thing we need to decide is what is the purpose of the discussion. If
this purpose is some vague idea about learning being improved by student
interaction, we should probably give up at this point. If there is a strong,
clear reason, then I feel that we will have to find some way to prod the
students into being active. On obvious way is to connect participation in
the discussion to the course grade. This would be similar to what a
colleague does in the LL (Language Lab). He has a student list and uses the
equipment to listen in on the students while they are supposedly working. If
the student is doing something appropriate, the student gets a point.
Otherwise the student receives nothing. The total points that the student
receives during the semester is used as a factor in calculating the final
grade. Other factors are tests and attendance. A similar scheme could work
for a mailing list. The grading could be one point for each message or it
could be much more complicated. For example, points could be given for
whether the message is responding to another or initiating a new subject,
for content, for length or for any other criteria which are relevant to the
desired discussion.
Does anyone else have any ideas?
>From the moderator:
Charles Adamson, Ph.D.
Professor, Faculty of Nursing
Miyagi University
Miyagi-ken, Japan
---------------------------------------------------------
List address to send message to everyone:
ifets-discussion@catfish.valdosta.edu
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun 20 May 2001 - 23:33:59 MEST