Well, the mid-semester break has come & gone & so far only 1 student has posted a WebQuest - one of the 2 assignments for this semester. This is a bit worrying ... apparently they seem to be struggling with organising their time & timing. This was always going to be a problem, but I was hopeful. So now I'm going to have to start doing some reminder messages. I'm also re-scheduling the last workshop from June to this weekend, if they can come, to try to get them all back on track before it's too late. Otherwise they'll end up with 2 assignments looming & not enough time to do either of them justice. I deliberately left the due dates for the assignments open, & also left the decision up to them as to which one they did in which order, but they all seem to be working on the WebQuest 1st ... without having looked at the demands of the other assignment yet.
Three other students have been in communication with me about their WebQuests, so I am hopeful that they will be able to track back to a workable timeline, but I've not even had any communication from the others. What particularly worries me is that most of the students who have not been in communication are international students, & so may be preferring not to communicate at all because they feel they have fallen so far behind - or because they still do not understand the task fully & are reluctant to ask for more assistance. I'll see what response I get from my reminder messages this week.
LifeNtheUniverseWell, the second workshop has also gone well. I'll be posting more photos of this one when I have had time to process them. A few students had, as I expected, not done anything much since the last workshop ... I think it will take some of them a bit of time to get themselves organised and learn the skills of budgeting their own time & making their own deadlines and timelines - not an easy or quick skill to learn. Hopefully they will all learn these strategies before they run out of time to complete the 2 assignments - since I have set no deadlines for these, except the obvious one when semester ends.
