It is very interesting following the progress of the class. Everyone in class today said they felt confused at the start of the course, and all but one would have liked more structure at the beginning e.g. read this article. One person said that if there wasn't any confusion, there would have been less motivation to go off exploring and trying new things out. One person hadn't managed to find the readings on Blackboard so must have missed the explanation in class, and hadn't explored Bb to find what was there. Some found the terminology and assessments confusing and had a lack of understanding about what was required. For example, what was a learning resource? Did we give them too much choice...but then "choice is okay if you can make choices within a structured environment" as one person said.

Interesting that about half the class has made quite a big shift even though they are confused, whereas the other half has kept pretty quiet. I believe that in trying to get the class to generate content we may have reduced the clarity of the subject initially. It was almost as if they would have benefited more by being given step by step instructions "do this, read that, write this, answer this etc" to start with. How do we give the "big picture" overview and yet get them thinking about issues such as student access, appropriate technology, different software etc? Maybe if the model was to get everyone to create a storyboard for a video for use in their class, we might have caused less confusion? But FL is such a huge subject which has taken us years to get to grips with, and we are learning all the time and having to change our approaches and technologies continually to keep up.

I believe it takes a lot of time to be able to use your imagination and practise lateral thinking when learning how to introduce flexibility into a course. Not only do we have to undo years of "traditional thinking", but in a matter of a few weeks we have had to help people gain skills in a wide range of strategies and methods and challenge them to try new tools. some people have jumped in "boots and all", others have needed a lot of nuturing, some have dropped out and others have been hanging back, quite unsure and confused.

How do we cater to all the different learning styles? If we asked them to work on a project together this would take away from the individuality of creating something applicable to their work situations. The two hour workshops are not really enough to get people going on anything substantial. The individual mentoring sessions appear to be working, but they are time consuming for the lecturers.

An exercise in class today was to introduce some assessment criteria and get the class to critique it. Their feedback will be used to make modifications and the assessment criteria will be given to the students to fill out and submit with their assessments. We also talked about how their assessments were progressing, and their ideas for their plans. I also got them to think about how their plans would service existing learners more efficiently, and how they might reach other learners not already enrolled in programmes at OP.

we also went over what was required in the scope and the design plan, and I reminded them where to find the template.

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