New post from Phil in China

Klaus and Anne, Your ideas sound very interesting. Firstly, I think you are on to a good line of thinking, Anne, in discussing 'whether we provide enough support...to develop autonomy' and I can relate to your reflections on putting oneself in the shoes of the students and being quite overwhelmed! Coincidentally I am hosting a 'staff development' discussion next week on autonomy and scaffolding (as a facilitator, and not an expert!), and I will let you know if any interesting technology related comments come up. I am intending to raise similar questions to the ones you have proposed, (and those from you, Klaus), and in particular how we can provide more scaffolding for students, as they do seem to be somewhat reluctant (here at UNNC at least) to dive in at the deep end with regard to autonomous study.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this is no big surprise for me when I stop to consider the sheer volume of options they are presented with in terms of self study. Perhaps, therefore, I will work on developing some WebCT 'pathways' that aim to guide students towards suggested study options, thereby opting for the second type of assignemnt structure (i.e. design materials and write a rationale). I was thinking that recommendations regarding a simple set of specific materials could be made by the computer, according to student responses to a questionairre regarding their own needs (which our students have spent a good deal of time considering during our 3 week introductory module, which ends this week, and I am sure something similar is happening in the UK). I am guessing that this would be easy to set up in WebCT. I hope so! Any thoughts?

Another idea that crossed my mind when considering working together on an assignment was a simulation (Ho and Crookall, 1995), (Gonzalez-Lloret 2003), whereby we could exploit the differences in viewpoint between our two campuses and create some kind of cross-campus online activity for students. Perhaps an extended role play regarding environmental issues with one team representing China and the other the UK, or Europe, (or the United Nations, as the case may be!). I have found that students here get particularly passionate when issues of China's internatinal policy are raised, so I don't think that there would be any shortage of active and passionate volunteers for this. Any ideas on how to develop this into something more realisitic would be welcome, not neccessarily for this module only. (ps- we may even be able to muster a Russian 'team' amongst our small Russian student body!)

Finally, I have to admit that I am a bit jealous that Klaus mentioned a discussion with other students regarding the assignemnt (oh, how I yearn for chats with fellow students over coffee on a british campus!), and would really appreciate being involved in a discussion at some point. Perhaps we could use our new found technological awareness (?!) to set up a live discussion online?

Also, Klaus, have you read David Little's article on teacher autonomy? If not, I can email it to you, as I think it may be relevant to at least one of the points you are thinking of writing about.

Bye for now,Phil.