Assignments
The course unit consists of two (2) individual assignments, two (2) group assignments, and a grade for participation:
1. Good/Bad Design presentation (Individual) (10%)
2. Flash modules (Individual) (10%)
3. Case-study (Group) (30%)
4. Learning environment design & evaluation (Group) (45%)
5. Participation (5%)
A document explaining all assignments can be found here.
A document listing all deadline for all assignments can be found here.
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1. Veronica Periani | October 2, 2008 at 10:44 pm
I hope this is the right place for a question to George, hoping not being too obvious….In the first discussion topic on Blackboard, about aesthetic and transformational learning experiences, should we consider the two adjectives separately or together? Because I started to reflect on aesthetics separately, (having read the first reading), but I have found very difficult prescind from the second descriptor…and perhaps this is already an answer, but I would like to be sure to not go away from the point.
Thank you!
2. Neil Ballantyne | October 11, 2008 at 8:39 am
wow – there seems a huge amount to do here in 12 weeks. In a previous module we had to give a 15 minute presentation and that was worth 20% of the mark. Here it is only worth 10%. 15 minutes talk is approximately 1500 words (at 100 wpm which seems a reasonable average). Another module was a 3000 word essay but that was 100%.
I’m not trying to shirk work here but I’m worried how all this is viable in a short period of time when some of us have full time jobs and other modules to complete.
3. George Veletsianos | October 11, 2008 at 11:58 am
1. Since the presentation is 10% consider it to be of less importance than the 20% presentation in the other module.
2. Given the allocated hours of work required for the module I felt that this was an “about right” workload.
3. I mentioned this in class, but maybe you didn’t get to it on the audio recording yet, as time goes by we will see how it all looks. If it looks to be too much, we can revise things accordingly.
4. Neil Ballantyne | October 23, 2008 at 2:57 am
How is the main project, to produce a learning environment, managed as group work? I don’t really understand how this can be done as group work and there is no reference to how this would be done as a group in the document.
5. George Veletsianos | October 23, 2008 at 9:44 am
While it is standard practice in the academia, and unfortunately in the K-12 environment, for assignments to be done individually, most of our work outside of formal education happens in collaboration with others. I purposefully did not describe how you can manage this project and left it up to the teams, because each team might have their own way of working on this. I can offer recommendations if you wish, but I suggest first talking to your group and discussing each person’s perceptions of how the project is to be managed. Ideally, this should come from the group rather than from me. Something else that i’d like to note is that the project is decomposed in smaller parts to assist you with ongoing collaboration and completion and provide me with an opportunity to give ongoing feedback to groups.
6. Neil Ballantyne | October 25, 2008 at 4:17 am
I agree with you points as to the benefits of group work but:
It would seem OK to build “a flash game, a simulation, a tutorial, or website” collaboratively when you can all sit down in the same room and work on the same software. However, using different versions of the software in a place eight hours away is going to be difficult – and contrived if you are trying to replicate a work experience.
Of course collaboration is a good thing and essential in work – but this is academia and I think we should have to rely on ourselves for assessed tasks which could prove the difference between passing and failing.
7. George Veletsianos | October 25, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Neil, i’ve responded to your email that raised similar issues, but I also wanted to respond on here for the benefit of others:
I can see how it can be a problem if you all want to work on the same file and you all want to code in flash. Nevertheless, there are different ways to work as a group. Feel free to specialize. Feel free to talk with your group and assign roles. If you want to only do the flash part let them know. Others might only want to work on writing up the final essay. Or, they might want to create the graphics, or do a small scale evaluation study.
Finally, regarding the academia argument, I think that IS the problem with the academia: namely, that we treat it as a separate entity and do things differently that in the way that they are normally done outside of the academia. I don’t think individualistic work is as beneficial as cooperative work, and you will have to rely on each other, encourage each other, and be clear on the expectations of the group.