Sarah and Holly were appointed this week as the student mentors/digital assistants who will be supporting the Changing the Learning Landscape project to embed digital literacy in the curriculum.
We discovered by accident that both are experienced Mac users which will be a great boon for us tutors as well as the students.
The other great thing about them is that both have been through this module themselves just last year, albeit not in the Scale Up format.
In truth, most of the students are managing OK with the Macs but do occasionally suffer frustrations. It's fun asking them to Tweet with a hashtag when the keyboard doesn't have a # !!!!!!!! (It's Alt+3 if you must know) or when CTRL C/ CTRLV doesn't copy and paste (it's command instead). We have been helpfully provided with a cheat sheet in a long manual which lives in the cupboard, and there are videos on Apple's website to explain the gestures used on the touchpad, but in the middle of a class you really don't have time to find these things.
The students themselves worked out the Command C thing (trial and error?) and Googled the # solution. So some good digital skills in evidence anyway :)
Numbers attending have dropped over the last three weeks. On the one hand this is fairly normal but on the other it is worrying that we are not seeing the promised increase in retention and engagement. It's impossible to know if we are doing something wrong without being able to talk to those who haven't attended. I think we also need to compare attendance from last year, though I have a feeling 2012 registers have been deleted from the VLE..... Maybe I can compare my registers with other current modules instead?
What it does mean is that the small Friday workshop can be integrated into the larger Monday session from November. On the one hand I will miss the smaller more intimate discussions in the small Friday group, but getting everyone in the same room will ensure a consistent experience across the year group.
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