Assignment 3 Network Training Session Common Feedback

I am very proud all of your network training sessions.  A few ETC alumni told me that they learned a lot from your sessions.  Personally, I may or may not know the technology integration that you delivered but there is always something new to me, even the tool I am fairly familiar with. I thought I should take time to share my observations on all sessions and share the common feedback with you.  In addition, I will share more specific feedback and comments to each group when you complete the training session report (due 11/25, Sunday).

 

What we did right:

• Timing: Stayed within 30 minutes time frame.  This demonstrated our respect to the audiences' time.
• Content: The instructional content was relevant. Demonstrated your knowledge in the topics. Knowledgeable and skillful.
• Integrated Additional tool: to enhance your training sessions, such as QR code, pre-recorded demo video etc.
• Seamless Execution: All sessions were executed professionally, particularly the demo.
• Integrating polling: to engage the audiences.
• Rich resources: were tagged and shared via Diigo which is a great way to implement community-community interaction.
• Addressed the Questions Appropriately: showed how knowledgeable your groups are. It is ok that we don't have answers for the audiences at time. We can take their contacts and share with them after the session.
• Great Collaboration: All groups collaborated well among/between groups members.

 

What to improve:

• Engaging audiences more & further: such as hands on activities, having them to participate and contribute something on the tool you instruct. Briefly demonstrate the tools and conduct hands on activities with audiences.  Polling is good to have but it is more superficial.
• What are the values to participate your sessions live vs to watch the recordings? This question was asked by our classmates. How will you answer it?  Here are my thoughts to share with you.  Perhaps "interaction" is the key value.  What interactions? Learner-presenters interaction, learners-learners interaction, and learner-interface interaction.  These interactions are to facilitate effective learner-content interaction. Those who participate in the live sessions have a chance to "interact" with the presenters and the audiences while watching recording doesn't have such privilege. Effective sessions should engage the audiences actively, particularly having the audiences doing something that are related to learning about the content.  When it comes to content of session, the audiences can access it anytime later. Thirty minutes are very short and precious. Therefore, the training session should focus more on "interaction" in addition to the content.  Regardless 30 minutes or 16 weeks learning, people may not find a meaningful use for their work or learning.  When people need to learn in-depth on those topics later, effective training sessions support them to build good networks: people network, tool network, and resources network.  For people network, we know who (presenters) we should connect and contact.  For tool network, we know what tools we should use, such as video.  For resource network, we could access ETC655 Diigo Group to obtain resources. Such learning becomes more "meaningful" and "personalized."  Therefore, effective session should setup an environment to engage people in different interaction. Agree? Disagree?
• Accessibility/Universal Design/Section 508: It is critical to discuss how the tool complies with Section 508.  Accessibility is referred to tool usable to all people of all abilities and disabilities, such as Universal Design (UD), assistive technology etc.
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