Today’s session was getting us prepared for Observations. I’m looking forward to observing another member’s session, it will be really interesting. I don’t have much in the way of sessions planned for the next month so I’m going to look through some of the recorded sessions I have done recently. This might be a good opportunity to reflect on the type of sessions we were running for Staff development.

I think that a lot of the sessions that we ended up running for Staff development were lacking participation from the learners. If these practical sessions were run in a face-to-face environment then the learners would be working off guidance and I would come around asking and answering any questions that the learners may have.

This is quite difficult to replace online and because of time restraints, most of the sessions we ran were us just demonstrating the software/system/technology and the staff asking questions.

In the future, I would like to give the learners step-by-step activities and guidance before the session, so that when they come to the session it’s more of a question and answer discussion and reminder session rather than me just telling them how to do something. Similar to the flipped classroom model.  

I really need to get in touch with the person I’m to Observe and arrange a time that suits as I’m very conscious that time is moving fast. I have arranged a presentation to my team of some options for assessment tracking that I’m working on at the moment, this will be observed. I’m really glad that the work that I’m currently doing can fit into the PGcert.

The Exercise we did in groups was interesting, a member of our group talked about how there was no talk in the text about the observation and questionnaire fitted into the staff member’s development and felt like they were done in isolation with no room for discussion, reflection and development. I thought that this was an interesting point, how useful is this work on its own, in both cases without support and guidance the information they get from the observation report and questionnaire could have a negative effect rather than helping them to be better at teaching!