First: in how many ways, and in how many places is
there some representation of your teaching practice?
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Quite rightly, we think of teaching as centred on ourselves. But it sits inside
larger systems that involve not only ourselves and our departmental
colleagues, but students, administrators, timetablers, external examiners and so
on.
What we’d like you to do is collect all the all the places that some
representation of your module occurs. None of them will be the "whole
picture", all of them will be a partial view, created for a particular purpose and
particular audience. Think about institutional requirements (programme
approval?), and departmental requirements (entries in handbooks? module
evaluation? archive of material?) as well as your own lecture notes etc., and
materials generated by (or with) students - podcasts, slides, assessments etc.
Present it to us as a diagram,a list, a map, a catalogue – what ever you feel
most comfortable with.
I find this question quite tough to answer, since I’m a little unsure what is meant by
representation.
Firstly, there is a representation of it in my own home, and this takes the forms of the
books which remind me of the course. I tend to keep all the books and blocks
together in one place. I also have a bag which I carry to day schools and tutorials.
This is often the same bag. It contains all the stuff that I need: whiteboard pens,
pencils, extra cards, scrap paper, name tags from previous day schools (so I keep them
all the one place).
One of the most significant places is the course website, where students and staff can
visit to find more information about a course. I also make extensive use of internal
Open University information systems. Here, I see access to student lists and can quite
easily gain access to the on-line discussion forums.
I remember from previous presentations of the course, these forums are used as a way
to share notes with other students, and perhaps even presentations. I use my own
tutor group forum (which you might consider to be a virtual place) as a way to share
information between the students you are teaching.
I can also think of things in terms of a temporary representation, if this is allowed. In
terms of place, the teaching practice occurs at a particular location, in front of a class.
There are other places where my teaching practice extends to, i.e. in the homes of the
students. Here, my TMA comments might be read and interpreted by students.
Another place is the website that accompanies the course book, as well as the course
website which presents a useful calendar. Again, these things are not so much as
physical places, but virtual transitory ones what are accessed as and when required.
In my own sense of teaching, there is not really a physical place as such, but more
‘mechanisms’ and tools that we (as tutors) can use to communicate with others. If
there is a physical place, this place (i.e. a college) is likely to be used by other people.
There is no common room or chats had over a cup of tea or coffee. Instead, we may
each individual have our cups of tea or coffee and access the computer mediate tools
where we can share experiences with each other.