Waiting for marks

The hardest part for me for any course is waiting for the marks. I have just finished two courses in my MDE program. Although I know that I am probably at an A level given the marks so far.....I want to know for sure.

I know that the theory is that students should learn for the sake of learning. And I do, I really do. I just also want to know how I did on the scales that are there. I know the scales are not perfect and do not test all of our intelligences, and work better for some people than for others. But for me, it is a factor in my satisfaction. I love learning while I am doing the course - but at the end of the course I want closure.

Being on the other side, I know that often you need to wait until the bureaucratic process makes its way through. So I try to be patient - not working so far.

Games for motivation

Klein & Freitag (1991) found that instructional games enhanced the motivation of students in all four areas – attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction and that students learned as much with games as with traditional methods of instruction. Games add another method of instruction that can add to understanding as well as to motivation. I am currently trying to determine how this will work in my online course. When I am teaching a face-to-face course, this objective is much easier. For my f2f introductory accounting course, I used a monopoly game to teach the students accounting entries with great success. Students’ moves on the monopoly board resulted in purchases, sales, rent or miscellaneous income and expense. Students were then required to prepare the journal entry, post it to the correct general ledger account and then prepare a trail balance and statements when the game ended (after eight classes). Online monopoly is an option that I have been thinking about but have not yet been able to figure out a way to coordinate moves. I also use jeopardy style games for review before midterms and finals. For an online course, I am still working on how to implement this in a cost-effective manner for the students. There are programs that can create online jeopardy games for students for review and I am looking into these programs but they must be able to work with the LMS or have a separate website that students where students can logon.

Content dump or training

There are many great instructors out there. There are also many great course designers. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of great experts in fields who shouldn't be instructing.

Instruction should not be an information dump. Someone standing at the front of the room trying to tell you everything they know about a subject in as little time as possible is not training. We need to ensure that training - whether it is f2f or DE - is a learning experience for the student. We need to ensure that the opportunity is there for the student to understand and apply the material - not just be a sounding board to gather information.

Unfortunately, a lot of consumers of PD want to be a sounding board - they don't want to actually learn the material - they just want to be informed about that latest information without having to make the effort to read it. So, trainers have often taken the easiest route and designed their "course" as an information dump.

My goal is to ensure that my courses are never just and information dump....but that students who complete a course of mine - f2f or DE - will feel that they learned something. Even if they didn't intend to when they signed up for the course.

Balanced Scorecard

It seems no matter what course I am teaching, the importance of the balanced scorecard comes up. It is important for both accounting and IT people to understand.

Vinfen shows the examples of the four perspectives for industry

http://www.balancedscorecard.org/Portals/0/PDF/Vinfen_FY06_Scorecard.pdf

- financial

- learning and growth

- internal

- customer

But the balanced scorecard does not need to be used only for industry.

The University of Leeds has been awarded a place in Palladium's Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame.

You can see their interactive balanced scorecard here:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/about/strategy/strategy_map.htm#mainmap