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Paul - My Blog
Paul - My Blog
End of semester drain
Related to country: Australia

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Another semester has just finished for one of my subjects I teach. It feels like a long deflating sigh, but in a good way. Certainly it feels good now that all the pressure to teach is gone, but I also miss it already. Only the exam to go, and some marking. Already ideas are flowing for improvements for the next time I teach, and I'm already looking forward to the next semester.

In the next six months I'll be learning too. I've finilised the courses that I'll be taking so that I can rise from "head tutor" status so something approaching a lecture in an official capacity. The titles of the courses are:
- Mod #5.Innovations in Teachg & Learng Practice (B)
- Writing Assessment Criteria & Standards
- Mod #1 Principles of Scholarly University Teaching
- Building English Language Support into Curriculum
- Assessing Group Tasks
- Strategies for Teaching & Learning in Diverse Class
- Mod #2. Designing the Learning Experience
- Mod #3. Evaluating the Learning Experience
- Ten Ways to Design Out Plagiarism
- Assessment for Inclusive Teaching & Learning
- Mod #4.Innovations in Teachg & Learng Practice (A)
- Mod #6. Excellence & Scholarship in Univ Teaching

And maybe I'll do one on course co-ordination too.

What I'd like to know is, if anyone has any experiences dealing with a diverse class of students with different language backgrounds. I chose a course in it to hopefully find out what the universities official opinion is on this touchy topic.
It's been quite an interesting semester, in that although the course I'm teaching is in engineering and medicine, the biggest stumbling block for the semester is the students skill level in English. What was surprising was that almost half of the problems I was finding were connected with students who's first and only language was English. While in most cases it was international students who were struggling with writing and reading, it was not uncommon for some so local students to have such a poor level of writing skills as to make there work unreadable. Has anyone else encountered this?

June 2, 2009 | 11:04 PM Comments  0 comments

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