The second presentation of H809 is over, and we're hard at work on updates to the course for next year.
There was a good haul of distinctions in 2009, and average results were up slightly. Well done to all H809'ers on these great results.
Survey
The course team has been through the outcomes of the student end-of-course survey in some detail now. Thanks to all those who gave us feedback. Here are some highlights...
Workload: It looks like the changes to the materials and assessments made for this presentation have turned out well. In particular, the level of student workload now seems just about right. This is great news, and suggests that in updating the course for 2010 there should be no net increase or decrease in the amount of reading and assessment required.
Podcasts: The survey also found that the podcasts were a hit once again, and so I'm going to record a couple more to keep them refreshed.
Wiki: The wiki was a big success, unlike last year: I suspect the difference was that my seeding the wiki with slightly rubbish content at the start helped to give more people the confidence to edit pages. For next year, we might be trying a public wiki for the glossary as part of the openEd project (see below).
Blogging: There was about the same level of blogging as last year: Jo Iacovides is currently writing a report on our experiment of having a course blogger. Many thanks to Jo for her work in this role.
Topics: Some good ideas for new topics were suggested. In particular, more about research into social networking would be appreciated, so we'll consider possible readings on this topic for 2010.
TMAs: Late return of some assignments was an issue for some students this year, and we will need to seriously consider for 2011 whether - because it's a 20 week course - we need to move from three TMAs to two TMAs in order to allow sufficient time for feedback to be acted on.
Forums: There was less interaction in the forums than last year, so we'll need to have a think about what we can do about that for 2010.
Research
In other news, we've been lucky enough to win some funding from the EU Lifelong Learning Programme to support a three year project to make an 'open' version of the H809 materials that other project partners will be translating and reversioning. More on this news soon...
Au revoir
Finally, let me wish everyone who did H809 this year all the best for the future. Do let me know if it ends up helping you give a conference presentation, publish a journal paper, embark on a PhD, or simply develop your research interests.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter if you'd like to keep in touch. I promise a follow back if you mention H809! And well done once again on your result.
James
