Assignment 3

After looking through other group presentations, there are some interesting findings and solutions! And very interesting video presentations too, one of them is in youTube and the other used the idea of pod cast for presentation! Nice! Come to think of that we should do a video presentation too since it goes well with e-learning week, but we try to make it up for our content! haha I certainly hope so. Most of the groups used ethnography studies, laddering and interviews for this assignment. Their findings and solutions are quite coherent in that most of the problems with lectures in NUS have to do with the limited space in the theater, the layout of the theater and the speaker who is the lecturer. But none suggest the recipients could be at fault sometimes too. When students comes late or not listening even if the lecturer is talking clearly and firmly. Although there are a lot of variables in this experience, we can try to improve the non variant attributes that affect the whole learning experience. Invariant attributes being the equipment used, the layout of the seats, the time and place of the theater. If we minimize the problem from these invariant attributes, we can then improve on those variant attributes to have a enjoyable learning experience.

E-Learning Week

For week 6 (18th to 22nd Feb) of the semester CNM department is having a e-learning week. All or most of the NM modules are going to be presented online, in other words, no physical appearance is required, in my terms, its break time! Its is really a step forward in introducing e-learning to local university students. I’m still quite skeptical about this type of learning, unless there is a conducive environment for me to do so, then I’ll probably begin to like it. But from this experience I think we still have a distance to cover for me to be convinced that e-learning is effective. Although I did not take a lot of NM modules this semester, from my discussions with my friends I found that most of the online lectures are in given in Power Point slides, some with narration and for those which did not have narration, they have a online discussion via forum or chat rooms. I understand the problems and challenge we faced in CMC, but with today’s technology now I think we can have a more interactive and interesting system for the use of e-learning. Interactivity is important in helping one’s learning experience. I personally find that Power point slides with narrations alone can’t help a student to learn better, since its a one-way communication, there is hardly any feedback. For those modules which did have some feedback via forum or chat rooms, the issues students faced deter them for giving feedback, except unless they are rewarded if they do so. Topic of the interaction aside, if students can not easily give feedback in time or take too long for the system to response to other students comments, then the system have failed to do what it should deliver. What I’m trying to say is that if feedback or discussion channels are not accessible to students how would you expect a student to interact and learn from it? Some students might not even look or listen to the power point slides! I just want to suggestion a better system for interaction when in the online realm. We can use the idea of avatars in a virtual class room and each of us are a character in it. It mimic the position and environment of a real classroom or theater and when someone wants to speak, he just have to click a button for him to raise his hands. The system should also not allow more than a certain amount of students to speak at the same time. In here, the lecturer will be given a lot of controls, which maps the equipment in a lecture theater or tutorial rooms, such as the power to give a poll about some issues, to disallow students/avatars from talking etc. In here students are suppose to have a microphone connected for them to speak. I do not have very concise plan in this system but I hope you get the idea. I think it will be feasible with the right amount of controls in this virtual classroom system.