Clssroom Observation1 BTL

Today we had a classroom observation for a class called 'Strategy Modeling in Business"

The class started by inviting the students to introduce themselves. Then the tutor started giving like a warm up overview about the kind of topic being studied. This was also linked very briefly to previous relevant issues without solid grounds. The invitation for the students to comment about whether they have had any idea about the topic was made but seemingly the students did nt prepare any thing about the lesson. This sort of technique is called in training and teaching 'schemata activation' which is highly advisable in such situations. This shows that the tutor has made a good a start for the lesson.

Next, the tutor explained the topic with interventional invitations for the students to participate so they were engaged in the learning process. However, there seemed to be a lack of 'rewording' comments by the tutor though she, the tutor, extended the students' responses so made it in a more technical language and relevant  more directly to the issues undertaken.

In addition, there was a good use of social media applications in the lesson like using YouTube videos for 5 and 10 minutes. This is good so break the traditional pattern of teaching where it is done by the tutor. maybe this has created a sense of focused-on attention to the video. nevertheless, such a procedure was not mentored and followed by the tutor. for instance, the tutor's role was a kind of passive where she should have been a facilitator and could have been walking through students so to make sure they are intentional but in fact a  number of them were busy with their mobile phones and some other things. This can surely lead to inappropriate pattern of conscious learning, as the mentor process is important for learning and teaching quality but unfortunately seemingly wan not that present!

The engagement of students in classroom activities was clearly seen in the students working in groups of various strategy models to present through caravan fill-in report. The students were quiet collaborative and worked hard to make what they were assigned to do, then each group was presented by one of the group nominees. This follows 'group-discussion' and think-group-share' teaching methodology which is good to apply in such situations. Drawing on the Saudi  education context, in particular, technical colleges, this is a bit far from appropriate implementations, simply because the type of the students enrolled in the technical colleges is possibly demotivated and unwilling to make such effort to bring up desirable outcomes. In addition, the time spent on working out the models by the students was about an  hour which is not the same sort of time that can be given in technical colleges where the lesson period is almost 90 minutes, but surely this is not an excuse!!. The tutor's role, back to students group work, was a bit inactive where she should have been engaged more tediously in order to make instruction and help more clearly, especially at the beginning where the students were a bit confused of what exactly they had to do.