On starting this session I was unsure how it was being delivered as I had not received any instruction prior to the session. I logged into Moodle and found some instructions which had been posted from Mark which included watching two videos. However, I was then instructed to go onto the ‘Lets Chat’ forum which we started with last week. Mark had posted on a new thread to allow everyone to say hello and therefore I replied to this. We were then asked if we would prefer to use the ‘Zoom’ platform which we decided this would be better. The ‘Lets chat’ forum is not an efficient teaching platform as the replies take an extremely long time to come through. Because of this, it had taken half an hour before most of the group has said hello. I was feeling extremely frustrated with this session as a difficult time within society due to the country being in lockdown and so much change with university teaching I needed some structure and clarification.
I have really struggling to engage with this session, although we did finally get onto the zoom platform I feel as though it was not used effectively with discussion going off topic on numerous occasions during the explainination of our task which resulted in confusion for myself. I had to e-mail mark after the session to get clarification of the task.
Another negative to the zoom platform which I have found this week, is that if the host does not have a paid account with ‘Zoom’ you can only use the platform to hold a 40 minute meeting. Because of this, I feel as though I have missed out on a lot of essential learning time.
Over the past few weeks where we have been forced to complete our learning via online platforms I have found that I have been really struggling both with motivation and engagement within the sessions.
Rebecca.
Rebecca's Educational Blog 