So, the first few sessions of my new graduate certificate have been delivered and I think that it’s a good time to engage in a bit of reflection about what went well, and what did not. Overall, I’m reasonably pleased, but there are things that I would like to take into account and change in time. First and foremost, I was pleased with the engagement in the Canvas site; most students have logged on, and introduced themselves and added more information about the readings and engaged with the activities. In short, it appears that the online activities have been largely a success.
However, I do think that there are some areas that could be further improved with more work. In particular, something that one of the tutors indicated was that there needs to be a greater connection between the synchronous activities and the asynchronous work that’s on the LMS. That’s a fair point; the idea behind the asynchronous activities is that they are meant to provide a basis for the activities done in the live sessions. This has a problem, of course; if student haven’t done the asynchronous activities, then they are likely to struggle to participate in the seminar.
This leads onto another point: while I was keen to embrace a notion of HyFlex learning, I don’t think that I suitably explained to the students how it works. In other words, I needed to make sure that students understood the order and process of the work involved, and more importantly, the hierarchy of what needs to be done before the others.