The first article we are asked to read made me laugh. In fact thus far both pieces allude to the mischievous sense of humour of our course leader.
The fictitious tutor in Teaching Evaluation Study (MacFarlane) might need to reconsider her position in the profession. At least that was my initial assessment. One wonders if she cares about changing the educational experience for the students or if the job is just part of her portfolio.
There are various small ways she could change their experience and her own without ‘spoon feeding’ them, the term in this context laden with negative connotation. Supplying the lecture notes after a class is acceptable and also helpful for students not able to attend (some for very genuine reasons).
She could have the period of a class where the students are allowed to ask questions and raise concerns about the assessment.
Having a meeting with an administrator after they have both read the students’ responses would facilitate an exchange of ideas on how to progress.
Having watched the video….. I’m realising that at the start of the academic year and being completely new to online teaching I was completely second guessing myself. The need for parity was clouding my judgment on delivery as I trying to ensure that the students got the ‘same’ as their cohorts were with other tutors. Or to put it another way, that I was teaching in the same way as my colleagues.
More practice preparation with the topic would definitely have been useful as I wouldn’t normally deliver the whole session. However, there had been a increase in student numbers this year so for some elements we each had our own group (20 students) that we were responsible for disseminating the information to. That has since been changed as it was too labour intensive and so we now only manage our groups for their tutorials.