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Practical Issues of Implementation
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'What do I actually do?...'
Discuss with others in the institution
- course leaders or your Head of Department
- staff development officers
- Teaching and Learning co-ordinator or IT subcommittee
- LTDI contacts
- TLTP contacts or consortium members
Investigate hardware and space
- technical facilities
- numbers of students
- availability and scheduling of space
- availability and numbers of machines
- availability of spare machines
Re-design parts of the course
- discuss with students
- discuss with colleagues
- discuss with course committees and validation bodies
- amend the software
- prepare worksheets and other accompanying materials
- test worksheets and accompanying materials
- arrange for team teaching or demonstrators
Selling the idea to students
- when first running the software, tell them they are part of
a trial group and request feedback - then listen to it and act
on it
- offer an introductory session for those with no previous IT
experience, or offer them full details of any centrally-run courses
- tell the students they will gain from using computers and
offer them clear aims
- tie the computer sessions closely to the lectures
- assess the materials delivered by the computer (either by
machine or with subsequent exercises)
- only include relevant computer materials
- tell them how, where and when they get can get help with using
the materials
- tell them it is a new, exciting and dynamic way to learn
- get them involved in more general ways - for example by setting
up e-mail discussion lists for the module group and encouraging
them to contribute
Some of the most common student attitudes to prepare for...
- I don't like computers
- I don't know how to use a computer
- I know all about computers - so I'll press this key combination
(whoops!) (or just play games)
- I've done this before
- this is fun - much better than lectures
- this is not real work - it just lets staff off lecturing -
it is not difficult and it is not important
- it is too difficult - struggling with the computer and the
material
- we won't have this computer package in the real world - we
cannot take it away with us like we can a textbook (for future
reference)
- we can't get into the labs - they are fully booked and not
open at weekends or in the evenings
- sorry - I couldn't do the assignment because the computer
crashed just as I was going to save my work
- backups - what are they?
A few staff attitudes you may encounter
- computing is not our area - we are teachers of ...
- we should be teaching them DOS and UNIX - this is not real
computing (correct)
- computing is the preserve of technical staff - I'm a lecturer
- how do you know which student does the work
- what is wrong with the way we have taught this course in the
past?
- does it really save time and other resources?
- it is a very impersonal way of learning
- what would I do if the machines went wrong?
To contact the maintainers - mail (ltdi@icbl.hw.ac.uk)
HTML by Phil Barker
© LTDI All rights reserved.
Last modified: 27 January 1998.
