Well we are coming to the pointy end and I am now catching up after submitting assessments for other subjects…phew!! As TAFE moves through it’s amalgamationa and changes we are about to take on a new LMS (Learning Management System)…and all I can say is yeay!!
The current system is My.TAFE (Janison) and personally I have found it to be challenging and disappointing. I was very much excited to use it when I first found out about it. I attended workshops to learn how to use My.Tafe and although it was a little complex I began to work my way through setting up pages and courses etc. However then came my workload which as I became more immersed in my position became larger and larger. Soon there was no time to spend setting up pages for subjects or courses……and soon I began to forget the skills I had learnt.
Over many years I have then moved in and out of using My.Tafe….and nearly every time it was fraught with problems. Initially it was difficult to get our students on to the site, then it was cumbersome to navigate, then it became the process that to set up a site you had to work through the ‘epod’ team. They however had to solicite extra projects to gain income to keep afloate and therefore were not there for the sole purpose of the teachers and their course and inevitably, there became a delay or waiting period in order to get a site developed and set up…..problem after problem after problem.
It was interesting to then look at the CLEM model and identify the answers regarding My.Tafe:
1. Community
There is an active group of teachers within TAFE that use My.Tafe but it is not consistant across the insitute. In fact it was often used to provide Professional Development for the staff. We have a few different communities such as student cohorts and staff cohorts that use it, but this is very intermittant compared to the amount of courses and staff we have. To get help we would need to go to the site itself and navigate through or speak to one of the Librarians or once you were able to book time with the epod team you could get very good help from them.
2.Literature
The literature is all available to teach oneself about My.Tafe however, there is simply no time to spend in doing so. An argument could be made that one must make time, however we are quite overwhelmed in our everyday systems with either workloads or cumbersome processes.
3. Examples
There are many quality examples of course set up where the set up is slick, user friendly and a cohort of students has been put through, however most of these examples are used for quite small numbers of students or intermittant use.
4.Model
One is able to set up a site that contains a course which on the left hand side has Tabs for each subject and on those Tabs one can place documents or information or links to sites. There is also the ability for students to work through information in synchronous or Asynchronous time, and also for a student to submit assessment on or through this platform….again….if it works! There have been many many examples of students saying they have completed work and the system does not register it, or the student simply cannot access the site, the page or a particular document. I have had all of these experiences happen to me personally so I speak from hands on experience and it is very frustrating! I can only imagine the untold stress this would cause a student attempting to submit work or working on a very tight time schedule. Although as teachers we become fairly competent at working out technical problems we really do tend to need to go back to the epod team for assistance if their are problems. Regarding the students and help, there is really only the teacher and obviously with our workloads, assisting a student with a technical problem becomes low priority next to course content and assessment.
Quite the dilemma, bring on the new LMS!
JaneMichele 