HOW USABLE ARE THE ENVIRONMENTS WHERE I TEACH AND LEARN?

By Janet Arciniegas

Virtual Sabana and my pronunciation classroom at the school :

A constrast between a virtual and physical environment in terms of learnability, efficiency, memorability, and errors.

LEARNABILITY

Virtual Sabana is the learning environment I am currently using for learning.

It offers a wide range of authoring tools that seek to enhance learning. Most of them have been created with the aim to foster collaborative learning among students and instructor.

All of the resources are easily retrievable and easy to handle.

Teachers often present the courses with a layout that catches the students attention.

In the classroom where I teach, the resources

are kind of limited: coursebooks, CDs,

posters and CDplayers are the most common

tools. Even though they are very useful, they are

limited as to the possibilities they offer to

make learning easier and engaging.

EFFICIENCY

In Virtual Sabana learners performance is supported by the possibility of submitting and returning course assignments and communication with each other via online provide easy-to-follow steps to share ideas and knowledge.

Course content is delivered by using a lot of tools and thus successful in performance is effectively promoted.

F2F classroom instruction at the institution where I work allow students to work collaboratively in peer review exercises that allow them to support each other while doing in-class activities.

Immediate feedback after the performance of activities may help learners to success.

MEMORABILITY

User-friendly steps to access the platform and visual appealing in the design let the learner easily remember the steps to follow in order to access the site.

The accomplishment of tasks becomes a easy path to walk, since virtual sabana’s layout allows learners to identify faster the information they need. Information has been categorized according to the weeks and topics, dates, objectives etc.

All the information about the courses are kept in one very place: syllables, objective, resources, even grades from the very beginning of it.

Completion of tasks depends greatly on the way instructions are given in the classroom. I have to clearly state the steps for the task to be done. Most of the times those instructions are given in a paper but occasionally I give them orally. In this case, students need to quickly take notes on that and trust their memories to remember what to do.

Information regarding the course is delivered in several sessions and if students want to check them again they have to look for in different places to find them.

ERRORS

If I happen to post the wrong file or I realize that in a discussion board I had wrong ideas, the system gives me certain time to redo the task and edit the files.

Other types of errors must wait to be checked till an synchronous mean of communication is set.

In the classroom, remedial teaching is used as a response to errors in instruction. Students may learn from their own errors and mistakes and immediate peer review is also possible.However, it is difficult to correct them immediately or reconsider a mistake. Learners have to wait until the next face to face session .

REFERENCES

Energy [Google image] Retrieved September 15, 2010 from http://blog.nheconomy.com/?p=1007

Learn logo [Google image] Retrieved September 15, 2010 from http://learncommittee.com/Contact%20Us.html

Learning [Google image] Retrieved September 15, 2010 from http://www.universoabierto.com/3005/monografico-e-learning-en-bibliotecas/

Memorability [Google image] http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/ocado-delivering-on-user-experience/

Symbol error [Google image] http://www.d-a-l.com/122008/troubleshooting-outlook-errors/

Oblinger, D., & Oblinger, J. (Eds.) (2006). Learning Spaces. Educause. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces Chapter 6