We have experienced tech issues with our online platform so that even though the YouseeU session appeared to the students I could not open the session as the owner of the meeting. Sometimes students forgot to log on until after the meeting had closed. One student misunderstood the purpose of the meeting link and had kept trying to attend each meeting by clicking on the link for the first meeting - he had saved the link thinking it was like a hyperlink to a website and had been absent for the session I ran F2F at the local advisory, to show students how to use YouseeU. 2 students seem to operate on another planet entirely when it comes to committing to turn up virtually. I get that they don't see the sessions as important or useful to them, and am pondering how to best connect with them so we can catch up regularly in a forum which they are prepared to commit to. More on that later.
The face to face advisory sessions have been an excellent investment of time in getting to know my LA students and have them see that I am not a scary faceless authority figure. It's been very useful in establishing working relationships with 4 parents also - again, putting a face to the voice on the phone. In future I intend to prioritise meeting a family/student as soon as they are online capable so we can get our working relationship off to a positive start, quickly. Past experience has taught me not to assume that a student knows what they are doing online, even if they say the right words there can be big gaps in what they don't know that they don't know - such as organising files which are downloaded from their online lessons to be worked on whilst offline.
Last week I tried running a catch-up session later in the week due to the number of no-shows at the first instance, only to have total no-shows on the second session. One student needed a head set as she is dyslexic and finds typing quickly difficult, and could not get the sound set up on her home computer without using a microphone - sorted this week and she logged on today and was able to communicate with no dramas, finally! I have now started emailing the link out one day before the session, and then emailing, texting and messaging reminders on the actual day of the session.
For the students who have attended: I try to have a focus question ready for them to consider as soon as they are logged on. Things like: what's one thing you could do to help your learning journey before 3pm Friday? And I gave a list of ideas such as - contact my teacher if I'm stuck, finish off the last activity in a topic etc etc. This worked well for the student who attended that session and together we completed the action which she had identified. I have started using "screen share" more often as I get more confident with the vagaries of the YouseeU technology. I've shown how to find news items on My Korowai (more on that shortly) and how to use the information functions on a subject homepage (case in point today: MX1000 - which topics were internally assessed and how many credits each offered) so the student could then ask her MX teacher about recommendations for the next Internal topic. I was also able to show a student the feedback his MX teacher had given on a TMA so we could work out what task he needed to complete next.
The actual technology of YouseeU is very clunky, with the mechanism of the chat board adding delays in the flow of communication. I find it much easier to have people talk, but some student's internet providers don't buffer well enough to make this effective, and other students have an issue with speaking to a device (same student doesn't like phone calls either). I am going to try Skyping the students that haven't been successful with attending YouseeU to see if that makes any difference to their commitment for catch-ups. One student has agreed that using Messenger will be a good way to keep in touch - he doesn't check emails very regularly.
I have just started doing conditional release news items in My Korowai (released only to my LA group) which have snippets of information or a focus question to get them thinking about how they can be responsible for their own learning (variation on a theme with my prompts here!). I showed the news section to the 2 students who attended our YouseeU session today, and will send an email with a screen shot to the others tomorrow, showing them where the news items are and asking them to see if they can remember to check it each time they log on to their online courses.
Example below:
Where to from here: Persist!!
- Keep slogging away with running a regular YouseeU session, for now.
- Use every means possible to get in touch with my students, weekly, with a progress report and general chit chat about what has been happening for them.
- Attend 1 or 2 advisory sessions each term ( a big time commitment due to the hour travel each way) so we can work on their targets/goals for the term and update these in their Google Doc.
- Trial Skype with interested students.
- Trial Video/voice calling using FB messenger for interested students
- Trial text message type contact with students who are averse to speaking/video calls.
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