35-tunnine gümnaasiumi meediaõpetuse kursus ja selle tagasiside analüüs Lähte Ühisgümnaasiumi näitel
Date
2007
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
Any decisions a teacher has to make when preparing and planning for lessons or
courses depends on the teacher’s self image: whom he or she perceives him/herself,
which kind of teaching methods he/she prefers, which are his/her convictions. Based
on experiences when it comes to practice a teacher seldom remains faithful to only
one method, he/she tries to find new outputs and challenges.
The aim of the post-graduate thesis “35 hour Media Study Course in Gymnasium and
its Feedback´s analysis based on Lähte Gymnasium” is to study new possibilities how
to develop secondary students’ media competence through the feedback of media
studies and to involve them into assessing their media competence evaluation
(knowledge, skills, attitudes).
When media studies are concerned the content of knowledge is not as important as the
quality of learning. Besides assessing the student’s knowledge it is essential to find
out how they feel about their media studies, as to what and how they present their
values, how they learn. Feedback’s basic elements should be involved in the media
courses when studying the teaching/learning reflection and the time spent on should
be taken into account.
The teaching portfolio is a reflection of personal teaching experiences. Developing
this ideology and through the portfolio a lot of methodological material with example
analysis was presented to show the importance of reflective teaching. I presented a 35
hour media course conception, regardless if media studies are a recurrent subject or
elective, resulting in that the student should obtain specific knowledge about the
media, academic vocabulary and vocabulary for self-reflection. The portfolio was
developed based on the materials from Ohio and Indiana Universities. The teaching
portfolio is more spread in higher education, less in secondary education but compiled
with the aim to help the progress of media studies conception.
The orientation on feedback proved to be successful: the student’s motivation and
interest grew during the process, the analysis of the feedback’s elements assured that students learn better through self-reflection and feedback helps to evaluate the
teaching process’s effectiveness.
Everyone has its own opinion. There are students who do not understand the material
discussed in the lesson, there are ones who do not like it or are not interested. There
are ones who are interested, acquire knowledge and skills and wish to practice it
further. In the concrete course I could distinguish three groups: ones who have
thought it through, are interested in media, others who are indifferent, not enthusiastic
about it but try to cope and those who are not interested, disappointed in their personal
choices and find the things taught irrelevant. Based on the feedback the following
standpoint occurred – everyone picks out the things he likes, whether the layout or
critical analysis of the text etc. Due to that it is very difficult to standardize the
materials used in the media course.
As it is a course developing general skills, a teacher should use a more personal
approach when keeping the subsequent perspectives in mind, even using the study
map reflecting the student’s working process and analyse through it what the student
is interested in and not, what prevents the acquiring of knowledge/skills, if it is a case
of low learning motivation or the material is too difficult to cope with. Also it is a
good source to carry out a student´s personal development conversation.
The reflective practice is not common in Estonian schools, it makes the students and
teachers to change their learning and teaching attitudes but it is worth to try.
Reflective or critical practice can be viewed as a potential outlook on the media
education. In the current attempt to plan feedback and evaluation together with other
study activities is quite arguable. There are plenty to think about and try before giving
advice to others but to think along and further is always a good idea.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), magistritööd, meediaõpetus, kursused, retseptsioon, gümnaasiumid, Lähte Ühisgümnaasium