Suggestions

Hi,
Here are suggestions for improving participation as well as comments on the course in general.

Just about everyone in the MET has a background in education or technology or has experience in instructional design. The consequence is that, as individuals, we have a lot to start with in most ETEC courses. In this course however, there is much more emphasis on business, so I think there could have been more teamwork. That would have allowed us to gain a lot more knowledge about starting up a venture. Also, it seems that the people that are attracted to this kind of course are more likely to take risks and have more experience with ed tech tools, so I would have liked the opportunity to work with classmates more.

I agree with a lot of other people that a blog format makes it very difficult to follow discussions because of all the scrolling, searching through posts… However, considering that we only used the blog for a few weeks, and that the rest of the discussions took place in the OERs, the inconvenience didn’t last long. What it did do, is provide us with the experience of discussing in a blog. That, in turn, will likely inform the way we construct courses in the future.

One thing that annoyed me was that a couple of the posts I made as “comments” needed to be approved before they could be published. I think it’s because they contained a few links. In any case, I don’t believe they were published during the week that I posted them, so no one could respond to them. I re-submitted one of those entries in the form of an original post, and that worked. If there’s a way to fix this, that would be great. If not, it might be worth recommending that students post links in a different way, or only in original posts, rather than in comments.

Something I really enjoyed about this course was the use of media in the assignments 1-3. They were excellent opportunities for practising graphic design and they showed me just how much your choice of medium shapes the content. It was extremely valuable to see the web sites, applications, videos and all other media-based content that everyone produced. In the courses I have left in the MET, I’ll be requesting to submit my assignments using formats other than Word documents.

Good luck to everyone with your remaining courses and future projects and enjoy the rest of the summer!

Dan

Posted in: Venture Forum