Evaluation of the course
At the beginning of the course I was very
sceptical about the syllabus because I thought it is impossible to get enough
input in such a short amount of time to make a productive e-portfolio. Although
the course instructor seemed really sympathic, she also admitted really
honestly from the first minute that also she is not an expert in new media.
Both confirmed in the next weeks that she was not an expert in new media and
that she was a really nice and responsive person.
My concerns from the beginning that this course would be on the one hand really unproductive, not helpful and just a waste of time or on the hand a really stressful and strict course in order to teach us all the new media, did not prove to be true. The special fact that she was not an expert was one of the main reasons this course was a real success.
With her motivating way of teaching, we all together, with the course instructor, explored and experienced the different new media, their advantages, disadvantages and the right use in the various situations. The whole course and the relationship between the course instructor and us, was based on a functional symbiosis, mutual respect and a highly motivational atmosphere. That means it was normal that we learned things from her and she learned things from us and we all learned together from the internet.
Certainly the course instructor perceives a huge part of the success of a course but now enough said about her, now the syllabus and theory should be discussed.
I already mentioned in my “Reflection” what I think about the different tools and the usage of them, so I’m not going to write about them again. More interesting is now how we worked with them in the course. For me the main problem was that in the course we always got a good overview on what kind of tool we are working at the specific moment, so the speak, of what this tool is all about and what you can do with it.
And there was in my opinion the problem, we always got to know of what it is about but not really how we can use it and work with it. I repeat that this is my opinion and probably also my fault, but I always had to ask course members to really get to know all of the tricks of the specific tool and how it works most effectively. That’s why I think that the course needs a lot of additional time at home to get to know the media and the tools better. For this is reason it was unnecessary to add such huge reading assignments, which were also not provided online.
The biggest problem here was that the work and the course and the content of the reading assignments were too much and didn’t really fit together. So regarding at the syllabus, all in all it was just too much, but not only and not primary in terms of work, but more in terms of necessity and learning effects. An example for that would be the additional tasks. I’m not sure that I will learn so much about new media by looking strained after five different topics just to comply the course requirements and after working the whole semester with new media and on the weebly portfolio. It would have been better to offer the five additional tasks as an additional work if somebody finds something interesting in the internet and in order to improve the grade.
By the way I think the grading system of the presentation and also of the tasks was very fair and I really liked the idea giving us the opportunity to decide which one of our groups gets which grade. This progressive way of grading a presentation should be conducted by every instructor at university.
The presentations were also a good way to get to know more about the topic, no matter if you watched a presentation or if you did it by yourself. Here I liked that the instructor gave us so much freedoms to decide what we are doing and to create something on our own.
All in all, this entire course was really helpful and gave me a completely different look on new media. Now I feel trained in this area and I know more tools than only Powerpoint. The only critics I have are the fact that it was just too much work. If it would have a little less work, I already mentioned what I had cancelled, it would have been an even better course as it already was!
My concerns from the beginning that this course would be on the one hand really unproductive, not helpful and just a waste of time or on the hand a really stressful and strict course in order to teach us all the new media, did not prove to be true. The special fact that she was not an expert was one of the main reasons this course was a real success.
With her motivating way of teaching, we all together, with the course instructor, explored and experienced the different new media, their advantages, disadvantages and the right use in the various situations. The whole course and the relationship between the course instructor and us, was based on a functional symbiosis, mutual respect and a highly motivational atmosphere. That means it was normal that we learned things from her and she learned things from us and we all learned together from the internet.
Certainly the course instructor perceives a huge part of the success of a course but now enough said about her, now the syllabus and theory should be discussed.
I already mentioned in my “Reflection” what I think about the different tools and the usage of them, so I’m not going to write about them again. More interesting is now how we worked with them in the course. For me the main problem was that in the course we always got a good overview on what kind of tool we are working at the specific moment, so the speak, of what this tool is all about and what you can do with it.
And there was in my opinion the problem, we always got to know of what it is about but not really how we can use it and work with it. I repeat that this is my opinion and probably also my fault, but I always had to ask course members to really get to know all of the tricks of the specific tool and how it works most effectively. That’s why I think that the course needs a lot of additional time at home to get to know the media and the tools better. For this is reason it was unnecessary to add such huge reading assignments, which were also not provided online.
The biggest problem here was that the work and the course and the content of the reading assignments were too much and didn’t really fit together. So regarding at the syllabus, all in all it was just too much, but not only and not primary in terms of work, but more in terms of necessity and learning effects. An example for that would be the additional tasks. I’m not sure that I will learn so much about new media by looking strained after five different topics just to comply the course requirements and after working the whole semester with new media and on the weebly portfolio. It would have been better to offer the five additional tasks as an additional work if somebody finds something interesting in the internet and in order to improve the grade.
By the way I think the grading system of the presentation and also of the tasks was very fair and I really liked the idea giving us the opportunity to decide which one of our groups gets which grade. This progressive way of grading a presentation should be conducted by every instructor at university.
The presentations were also a good way to get to know more about the topic, no matter if you watched a presentation or if you did it by yourself. Here I liked that the instructor gave us so much freedoms to decide what we are doing and to create something on our own.
All in all, this entire course was really helpful and gave me a completely different look on new media. Now I feel trained in this area and I know more tools than only Powerpoint. The only critics I have are the fact that it was just too much work. If it would have a little less work, I already mentioned what I had cancelled, it would have been an even better course as it already was!
