Welcome to Week #8

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to Week #8 of our course and the second week of Unit 4 – can you believe there are only two weeks to go in our course! How time flies when you are having fun ;)

Last week in our course, Activity 1 in Unit 4 invited you to choose a topic to examine re; the impact of DLEs. Thank you all for your thought-provoking work thus far in examining some challenging and “ill structured” issues through the lens of the impact of digital learning. Well done! This activity invited you to explore issues that may have been unfamiliar or were very familiar but you were exploring them through a different lens with the potential benefit of other voice(s) in mix. The aim of the activity was to cultivate a broader/deeper understanding of the complexity of the issue and perhaps, inspire ongoing investigation by yourself or others through the sharing of your thinking and resources.

Thanks so much all for all of your contributions to the Unit 4 Activity 1 thus far. As I look through the posts completed, I am impressed with the depth of thought and effort. These will be so valuable as you move forward and the resources you have drawn up on will be very useful when you are considering the impact of the intersection of digital learning environments and social issues in future courses. I encourage everyone to have a look at the work of other participants and provide comments and questions for our learning community—and especially encourage you to expand your more usual circle to comment on posts from those participants you have not yet worked with.

Part of the purpose for the Unit 4 Activity 1 was to get your thoughts flowing re: issue/topic for Assignment Three – the briefing note. Some of you may pick up on the same issue you explored in Unit 4 Activity 1 for Assignment Three, while others may choose a completely different issue all together – either path is fine! Also, just a gentle reminder that Assignment Three is due this Thursday, June 01.

Now, this note wouldn’t be complete without an update on the feedback for Assignment Two. I am in the process of uploading my comments and thoughts on your debate components and you will find them in your individual Moodle assignment today (one for the Debate and the other for self/peer assessment). I encourage you to review the feedback prior to submitting your A3 so that you can incorporate what is relevant into your next individual written submission.

As always, if you have any questions or want to talk further once you have a chance to go through the feedback just let me know and I would be happy to connect. Many thanks to all of you for your hard work on the debate and for getting your peer/self assessment submitted in a timely manner. It was very much appreciated as it made it much easier to get the overall feedback to you in advance of Assignment Three.

Okay, I think that is about it from this end for now. Thanks for sticking with this long update and have a great week!

Russ