TESL 0110: Unit 3 - Making Mistakes
Making mistakes is part of life. I get that and I also know that I do not much care for making mistakes and being corrected. As the introduction to the unit indicated, we take our writing personally and being corrected can feel like heavy criticism.
Case in point - I just uploaded my assignment #3 to Tutela yesterday and I did it wrong, and clearly they want me to learn inductively because there was corrective direction to put it in the group and not in general resources. Great. And how do I do that? Nothing - no direction. I have looked through the videos and learned how to upload a resource which I did figure out how to do, but it does not show how to upload to a particular group, nor does it provide help on how to delete a resource if you have done it incorrectly.
So where does that leave the learner? In this case, the learner (me), is frustrated. I have limited time to submit the resource/activity I developed, and my ability to access the knowledge is limited to the time that others currently have to provide support.
-----
By the time you read this, I think the problem has been resolved and I have uploaded the assignment to the correct place (I hope) and updated the link in the appropriate discussion post. I received a timely response from support at Tutela and was able to navigate putting the activity in the right group. And I found out that I do not need to delete a resource as it will only be released for viewing in general resources once it has been approved and my was not approved yet. Good to know! Saves me a step and I appreciate that in light of all the other tasks required to complete this unit successfully.
This experience is a great reminder of how learners might deal with feedback or perceived lack of feedback. In unit three, we discussed appropriate ways to provide corrective feedback to learners, and a key piece that is perhaps not overtly discussed is that timely feedback will be very important for learners. While that might be intuitive for some teachers it is not something that everyone thinks of. It is also important to remember that the lack of timely feedback can increase the stress level of a learner and that could impact their ability to learn going forward.
When I conduct assessments at work, I know that the staff are nervous about both the outcome and the feedback. They often ask how soon will they hear from me about the results and I try to get back to them quickly. I believe the same is true for a classroom setting and that in order to support effective learning feedback needs to be timely and relevant to the learner and the context of the class. Complex coding and detailed written feedback is not appropriate for a beginner level class, but has an appropriate place in intermediate or advanced classes. Direct feedback is useful for all levels, but likely employed more in beginner levels, and in general there is strong support for providing positive reinforcement for success areas in any learner experience. In order to support positive learning experiences for students, the feedback experience must, in the end, also be positive.
And, to show that I can grasp both the deductive and inductive nature of learning and correction, please see the link below to the activity I posted on Tutela for the assignment for this course. I think I did it right!? (in case it does not work, you can also find it on the Activities page in this blog! 😉)
TESL 0110 "To be" Grammar Activity - Assignment #3
Case in point - I just uploaded my assignment #3 to Tutela yesterday and I did it wrong, and clearly they want me to learn inductively because there was corrective direction to put it in the group and not in general resources. Great. And how do I do that? Nothing - no direction. I have looked through the videos and learned how to upload a resource which I did figure out how to do, but it does not show how to upload to a particular group, nor does it provide help on how to delete a resource if you have done it incorrectly.
So where does that leave the learner? In this case, the learner (me), is frustrated. I have limited time to submit the resource/activity I developed, and my ability to access the knowledge is limited to the time that others currently have to provide support.
-----
By the time you read this, I think the problem has been resolved and I have uploaded the assignment to the correct place (I hope) and updated the link in the appropriate discussion post. I received a timely response from support at Tutela and was able to navigate putting the activity in the right group. And I found out that I do not need to delete a resource as it will only be released for viewing in general resources once it has been approved and my was not approved yet. Good to know! Saves me a step and I appreciate that in light of all the other tasks required to complete this unit successfully.
This experience is a great reminder of how learners might deal with feedback or perceived lack of feedback. In unit three, we discussed appropriate ways to provide corrective feedback to learners, and a key piece that is perhaps not overtly discussed is that timely feedback will be very important for learners. While that might be intuitive for some teachers it is not something that everyone thinks of. It is also important to remember that the lack of timely feedback can increase the stress level of a learner and that could impact their ability to learn going forward.
When I conduct assessments at work, I know that the staff are nervous about both the outcome and the feedback. They often ask how soon will they hear from me about the results and I try to get back to them quickly. I believe the same is true for a classroom setting and that in order to support effective learning feedback needs to be timely and relevant to the learner and the context of the class. Complex coding and detailed written feedback is not appropriate for a beginner level class, but has an appropriate place in intermediate or advanced classes. Direct feedback is useful for all levels, but likely employed more in beginner levels, and in general there is strong support for providing positive reinforcement for success areas in any learner experience. In order to support positive learning experiences for students, the feedback experience must, in the end, also be positive.
And, to show that I can grasp both the deductive and inductive nature of learning and correction, please see the link below to the activity I posted on Tutela for the assignment for this course. I think I did it right!? (in case it does not work, you can also find it on the Activities page in this blog! 😉)
TESL 0110 "To be" Grammar Activity - Assignment #3
Comments
Post a Comment