The fifth FSL session took part in the final teaching week of the university semester, with that no doubt in mind; it was scheduled to be as an online lecture. Meaning neither us as students or the FSL teaching staff had to be in the university to take part. The platform we used was Collaborate, I had not used it before but I watched the brief tutorial and got to grips with it quickly. Honesty not much different from ‘old school’ MSN messenger or Skype. Another very useful tool when working with students or dispersed groups.

The content of our session was really just to discuss any concerns and discuss teaching ideas. We were put into smaller groups to do this, groups of 4. Now I had to be in Uni on the day so couldn’t be at home in my scruffs. So I set myself up in the library, without thinking, in a quiet room meaning the microphone on my laptop had to be switched off. No real drama I just had to type very fast on the message feed to be involved. I found Collaborate to be a great tool and one I would like to use again, eventually incorporating it to my teaching if the subject and topic allow. As useful as it is, it could give some students an excuse to hide. ‘To be in the room, but not in the room’, as one of my classmates put it.

One of the issues that came up was some of the lecturers experienced students being regularly late…

I suggested that they get the students to come up with a code of conduct that they draft themselves. A practice with is often done by sports teams, I first heard about it when reading about the 2008 USA Olympic basketball team, ‘The redeem team’ which included superstars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, they came up with a set of rules that the players stuck to give themselves the best chance of success. Punctuality, behavior, curfew, drug policy were all covered.

There are versions of this posted on the USA basketball website.

Onwards and upwards……