Gertrude (lets call her Gertie shall we? - it's not her real name anyway) is an occupational therapy student. She is young - straight out of school, and comes from the lush farmlands of the King Country. She chose OT because she wants to work in health but she doesn't want to deal with things like blood and pee and pills. She chose Dunedin over Hamilton because her parents told her that it is better to have real lecturers than to go on-line to study.
Gertie is Ok with this - it is fun being a scarfie, although cold and crowded in her scruffy little flat. She is in her second year and is passing with C's and B's. She socialises heaps and studies when she can. She likes to do her study later at night as she is a bit of a night owl, but this is stymied unless she is very organised as she needs to use Blackboard for a lot of her resources and there is no internet in the flat. She even needs to download and print resources to take to class, but she has a good mate who will do this for her in return for a drink on Friday nights. This works for them both!
Getie did spend time on line the other day and worked through a learning package that the lecturer put up for Frames of Reference. It was cool having all the information laid out like that, with pictures and video clips and quizzes and stuff. It was even easier ploughing through the reading as there were questions to go with it so she was motivated to read more carefully. And what a bonus - the lecture was there too, some power point slides and same voice rabbiting on. But it took ages - over 2 hours and as she got so engrossed in it Gertie didn't have time to do the other work she had meant to. Oh well, maybe she should start planning her study time after all...
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This was a great story Hellie - it had elements that I recognised in some of my own students. I wonder if young students like this also struggle with knowing how to study. For example, if Gertie spent "over 2 hours" studying but struggled to achieve some of the course objectives, would that put her off so much that she might not be so interested in investigating learning resources in the future? Flexible learning delivery can offer many varied learning resources to cater for diverse learning styles but do these resources overwhelm those who cannot efficiently pick out what they can use?
ReplyDeleteHelen your story about Gertie has some very salient aspects, particularly, as Jennifer mentions, whether G has the ability to be organised in her self-directed study. The theme in your story also illustrates some of the issues with accessing online course material. It seems ironical that Gertie chose Dunedin so she could get the on-campus experience rather than stay in Hamilton and study online. And here she is having to do quite a bit of work online. I hope the online aspects of her study are also complemented in a balanced way with the f2f she wanted, otherwise she may end up taking to the "drink" for solace. :(
ReplyDeleteI wonder if she has the skills to download materials for offline use - put them on a laptop or USB stick or CD, or is this something her course lecturers should be obliged to make available? What do you and others think?
Great point Bronwyn!
ReplyDeleteI feel like I know G, in fact couple have been me when I was at uni. When I actually got organised enough to get online I would have to print everything because I was absolutely useless at reading on the computer screen (not much better now). On the other hand I could have read text books however I had a major aversion to these too.
My preferred study method, as I too preferred face-to-face learning (and perhaps saved my uni career), were study groups. These allowed me to have fruitful discussions and support other people’s learning.