Sarah Jones' Diary

In autumn 2006, Sarah Jones, a part time adult education teacher living in South Wales, attended a part time evening course called 'Developing Self Evaluation Techniques for Adult Learners'. The course was sponsored by the European Commission Grundvig programme funded ASSIPA project and included participants form different European countries. I was one of the participants on the course you can see a short video where the participants introduce themselves.

The teacher, Jenny Hughes, asked participants to keep a diary of their work on the course. Sarah decided to use her web log as her diary. The course was videoed and Sarah added the links to the different videos in her web log. She also added links to the handouts from the course.

After the course finished I was asked whether I would help in making an e-learning version. I had been very impressed with Sarah's diary (I had become something of a secret fan) and asked her if we could use the diary as the basis for the course. Sarah was a little reluctant at first but finally agreed.

This is the result - the ASSIPA e-learning course on 'Developing Self Evaluation Techniques for Adult Learners'.

Who is it for?

The course is designed for full and part time teachers in Adult Education. It does not matter what subject you are teaching, who employs you or indeed in which country you are working. We think that a good teacher is a good teacher wherever they are working. But at a wider level the course is may be useful for anyone interested in teaching and learning and self evaluation.

How does it work?

You can approach the course at a number of different levels.

At the simplest you can just read through Sarah's blog entries, watch the videos and think about the issues she is raising. Sarah is a good writer and some of the content is very witty. You can download the handouts as well.

But to help you gain more from the course I have added some structured questions. After each blog entry there is a button for comments and replies. I have added a comment on many of the entries (for some I could think of nothing to say!) suggesting issues you may wish to consider and activities you may wish to try. Some of the activities happen on line - in the course wiki. Others are more practical - for you to try in your own teaching and learning activities.

It may be helpful to you - and interesting to others if you were to record and share your answers with other learners. And of course you may have questions you wish to ask - or you may disagree with some of the things Sarah says - or more like her teacher Jenny.

There are three different ways you can do this.

The simplest is just to add a comment yourself under the different blog entries.

Or if you have a blog yourself you might wish to add your answers to your blog (and - if you know how - add a trackback to Sarah's blog entries - see below for help on this)

Or you might wish to set up a new blog to record your work on this course - and your practical work. We are offering free blogs to anyone who wishes.

We have added instruction on how to do this - and some help in using the system in the ASIPA course wiki.

Anyway - I hope you enjoy the course. I would like to express my thanks to Sarah for all her wonderful work during the course and for allowing us to use her blog as the basis for this course.

Oh - a quick not about the order. Blogs normally show the latest entry first. Obviously it makes sense for you to read Sarah's blog in reverse order - with the first entry coming first. You can change this with the setting box on recent blog entries on the top left of the window.

I tried to make this entry 'sticky' - so it would always come out first - but I failed - so I have had to 'fix' the date. Technology can be tricky sometimes!

Graham Attwell, December 2006