Story
I have taught this course since I came to BSEL in 2007. This was my first real teaching job – I didn’t feel very confident and acquired most of the content from other teachers who in turn had probably received it from someone else. Just like consultants do it. Over time, I introduced more and more of my own material and I went through a number of e-learning tools: moodle, wiki, and ILIAS. All along I had the impression that the course was overloaded and somehow screwed up:
- there were too many new concepts to learn for students in their 2nd term of university. The course had to be pruned, content had to be reduced.
- the company examples were mostly too abstract for students without prior work experience. They had to be brought to life and into the world that the students knew.
- i was too ambitious and did not allow myself enough time to settle into a teaching routine. I had to be less ambitious and perfectionist.
This course is a first attempt at a remedy:
- i have cut out a lot of material that i had hitherto presented (or tried to present) on slides. But presentation should not take up more than 20% of the course, if that. There are many excellent textbooks already!
- starting with the summer term 2009, the course will be blog-based, and over time I will adapt the exercises to also use the blog. Instead of having to learn many different new tools, students will only have to master the art of the blog. Others have done it – and so will you! (ILIAS goes without saying, but you know it already)
- i vow to only make smallish changes from term to term (apart from updating cases) and stick to my schedule like a witch to the broom!
Of course, over the next couple of semesters, things will be somewhat experimental (again!) and hence they won’t run as smoothly as without experimentation. But, hey, we are digital natives, not digital immigrants, aren’t we? Read more on this problem in an article by Prensky (2001)
Date: March 17, 2009