So, I’ve been working with a colleague to improve my posts. My colleague jokingly told me that this post was a “5 corner intersection”. What do you think he meant by that?
My post:
So far you have all posted responses in the forum. Many of those have me wondering more. Participant 1 said a “”recipe for good mentoring" - A little bit of time, A heart full of caring, Two good listening ears, A handful of encouragement, An ounce of understanding, And a whole lot of patience, Mix all of the ingredients together to make a difference in a person's life.” Great recipe, including all the things a mentoring relationship needs. However, as participant 2 said, “where does knowledge/experience with the curriculum correlate with a mentoring relationship?” Participant 1 came back with the importance of how these two things correlate, which is a great display of conversations building.According to several of you, trust and good communication is key to the success or failure of the relationship. Thought, how much communication is necessary for this online relationship to work? Also, most of you are saying the mentor needs to be knowledgeable about the subject area, which is completely necessary. Another thought is, how much experience should the mentor have in order to take on this role?Many of you also indicated the success or failure of the year is based on mentor/mentee satisfaction. Thought: what do you think would make a mentor or mentee satisfied? Maybe meeting the needs you have developed for a mentoring relationship to work? Also, some of you have agreed that journal writing by students is a good means for measuring the success of a mentoring relationship. Thought – what would you ask the students to write about, which would help you decide if the mentoring is aiding in your process?
-Cross-Confused Facilitator
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It seems as though you are trying to ask too many questions in just one post. You should try to focus on one particular area. Your colleagues comment about a 5 way intersection implies that there is just too much to choose from in your post. With some many questions being thrown around all in one post, the students may have a hard time answering all of the questions or even deciding how to reply to such a post. Simplify your posts and keep it to one or two substantive questions that the students can really focus on, reply to, and continue to discuss during the course of the week.
ReplyDeleteHey Derek,
ReplyDeleteI think you have figured out the 5 corner intersection for this instructor. I agree that too many questions can be a problem. Too many questions can also cause someone to accidentally leave our a part of the response just because there is so much going on. It can also cause for very long responses which other classmates will not enjoy sorting and reading through them all to post a response of their own.
~Darla
Dear looking for improvement,
ReplyDeleteI believe what your colleague was trying to convey to you is that there is no direction in your response. Your post is all over the place with thoughts. Imagine you are sitting at a five corner intersection. There are no rules for them because they are not constructed as they would be chaotic to travel through. Similarly, your post is chaotic to travel through because you bring up so many themes and questions.
Your ideas and questions are valued. So, perhaps you can either think through what you would really like to know, or, write several discussion replies and keep to one idea in each post so that your classmates can easily target their responses.
It's great to see you are considering all facets of the discussion, it reveals the topics are important to you.
~Your colleague, Barb
Wow, there's a lot going on here! Too many things coming from too many directions. There needs to be more focus on one or two points. The other points are could be brought up in later discussions.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the format of your response could be changed to be more effective. Having one long paragraph is a bit over whelming for this situation. If you break this into a few paragraphs it will be more visually pleasing and a bit less stressful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis certainly is an overwhelming post that may prove difficult and frustrating for users to navigate through (much like a 5-way intersection would be!). There are a lot of directions that a student can choose to travel in, but no real direction. It's a little chaotic! You can help students by providing more directions to help them navigate through the topic.
ReplyDeleteSome things to consider:
The body of the post is very long and looks a little overwhelming to read. Breaking a long post, like this, up into smaller, more digestible sections, would look more inviting and encourage others to read it.
Also, it’s a little verbose. Try summing up the ideas from participants when they are longer responses, like Participant 1. Hit the key points or ideas that are important to bring to everyone’s attention and then get to the point.
You have a lot of great questions that will help students to extend thinking but it’s just TOO much to consider all at once! Focus on one or two of the most important points or try to find a way to combine ideas into one question.
Also, it might help to post individual questions to specific student’s posts. This can allow students to follow a specific direction of thought (you may find it helpful to read through the article, Threaded Discussion by Karen Swan for more information) while allowing you to ask all of those questions that can help students to find deeper meaning in the material.
-Julie
(it posted the wrong thing above that is why it says the post has been removed! sorry!)
This instructor is not clearly expressing his/her ideas. My advice would be to ask the instructor to write his post and then edit for clarity. For example, he may want to put all of his thoughts at the end of the post using a bulleted list. Or, he may want to make his discussion more conversational as opposed to trying to address every comment by every instructor. Overall, finding a way to trash what it absolutely unnecessary will help this facilitator to "summarize" more effectively. A summary highlights important or interesting information without recapping every incident.
ReplyDeleteAG