Robert Kennedy College - lesson learned - I should have known better!

A warning to everyone - I of all people should have known better and I'm sure my e-learning colleagues will find this amusing!

Two days ago, my laptop crashed (or at least I thought it had) - it would not boot up, no screen display - nothing. I realised that although I had been religiously backing up my files once a week onto an external hard drive, this does not allow me to view or access my files, only restore them to another laptop or computer. Big mistake on my part, not understanding the difference.

Fortunately, I have a Dropbox account but I had not been using this to keep a separate copy of all my documents, only my photos.

I discovered after a bit of trial and error that it was the power cable at fault, the battery still worked and the screen was ok. Therefore, thankfully, I was able to get my files back, but the few hours inbetween when I was worried about losing the files, which included all my MALIC documents, does not bear thinking about. First thing I did was copy everything to my Dropbox account and then create a work folder on the external hard driver and do the same. I now have them in two places and will update them regularly.

I won't be caught out a second time, but I wonder how many of you out there have been making the same mistake - please do a backup, especially of your mid term. Our tutor in MOD013 did warn us about keeping a copy but I failed to take note.

Robert Kennedy College - timing dilemmas

This is going to be a busy couple of months - most people slow down over the summer, especially in the educational world but not MALIC students.

I have three priorities over the next two months - my current module ends on 19 August and we have a month to submit the final assignment by 19 September. However, the next module I haved signed up for commences on 10 September, which is also the same week as the residency in Zurich begins.

This means that I will have to have the final assignment completed and submitted before I leave for Zurich, 1-2 weeks before the deadline, be thinking about signing into the new module, to make sure I am registered as starting it and to prepare for the residency with any pre-reading.

All this on top of a full time job. I think it will be very time consuming and I also need to be considering the reading list for the new module, in case I am missing any of the texts. Plus, I will need to give careful consideration to possible topics for my dissertation, since I hope that I will have the opportunity to discuss this with our tutors at the residency - this will mean some time for research on top of everything else.

Well here goes. Wish me luck.

Driving me crazy in Qatar

Finally, having been here a little over sixteen months now, I feel qualified to comment on the truly hair-raising experience of driving here in Qatar - I exaggerate not. Having gained my Qatari driving licence, which was only a matter of waiting for my residence permit and then visiting yet another official institution with a queuing system, with photos etc, I duly decided to rent a car for three months. This is fairly standard practice for ex-pats and you usually end up with a Toyota Corolla - this being the cheapest and most reliable vehicle they have.

The first week is the worst, and you definitely need a passenger to help you. It's not just the fact that you are driving on the right hand side of the road. It's more because all the roads are three lane highways and the motorists here will pass you on both sides without any warning, so you need an extra pair of eyes as well as all the mirrors to look out for this happening.

The other phenomenon is that they do not believe in using their indicators when turning off, pulling out in front of you, will often cross three lanes in front of you without any warning and then turn off and if you wait any longer than ten seconds at a junction or roundabout, then the horn comes into play.

Forget the normal stopping distance when driving - if you leave a space longer than a car's length in front of you, someone will fill it. The most common and frightening practice I have seen is tailgating which happens all the time, when a local in a Land Cruiser wants to get past in the fast lane or the inside lane and you are in the way.

The best day for a new driver to practise is Friday, which is the start of the weekend and Friday prayers, so the roads are very quiet. See the picture below which is their main highway to the north of the country - this was taken on a Friday morning - we were the only car on the road.

Roundabouts are quite an experience - they usually have traffic lights on them, but not many people take any notice of the red stop light. There are no traffic cameras on the roundabouts, so unless there is a traffic cop, they get away with it.  However, lane discipline is non existent and you need eyes in the back of your head. I have learnt to watch for the "body language" of the cars here and predict what they are going to do, then hang back and let them get on with it. That way, you usually avoid being part of the daily accidents which occur on the roundabouts.

All accidents have to be reported to the police or you cannot get your car repaired. If you have an accident with a local, it is without doubt, going to be your fault.

There is a very high percentage of four wheel drive cars here - probably about 80% and most of those are white, silver or grey - very occasionally you might see a coloured car but not very often. Most car parks are a sea of white! We have now bought a second hand 4x4, and it is definitely much safer - size matters here and the bigger the 4x4 the safer you are on the roads. Generally, as a rule of thumb, everyone gives way to Land Cruisers, usually because they have Qataris driving them and they are bigger than you.

Driving to work on a Sunday morning, the first day of the week for me, at 6.45 am, the traffic is busy at the traffic lights as we all wait our turn. You learn to dread the lights going to red, because you are in for at least a five minute wait then. No-one jumps the lights because it is a 6,000 QR fine (£1,000) and there are cameras on each set. This picture was at the lights near work, one morning when we had just had some heavy rain - just like a morning going to work in England.

Robert Kennedy College - it's done!

Finally, with four days to go before the deadline, I have completed the mid term assignment for this module and am about to upload it. It is hard to believe the sense of relief that this brings when it has gone off into cyberspace and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it at that point. It will either be good enough or it won't and we await our feedback with a mix of dread and anticipation.

I have taken a completely different approach to this assignment. I mentioned in an earlier post that my assignment structure had been criticised, and in particular, with reference to the literature review. I have tried to analyse this feedback and attempt to resolve what I am doing wrong. I hope that this assignment's feedback will acknowledge this. However, one difficulty is that because different tutors mark each module, I'm not sure whether this will help, since the feedback has been different on both final assignments so far. Only time will tell.

Again, I am hoping that the residency will help, since we will have an opportunity to discuss any concerns we have face to face. Although the online experience is great and very well constructed, there are occasions when only face to face discussion will help. This is why I am a firm supporter of blended learning and why full e-learning courses are so very difficult to deliver successfully.

Robert Kennedy College - it's that time again

It's that time again, when we have to start drafting our mid-term assignment for the current module. I have been reading, reading and doing more reading - getting to grips with the essential texts and some of the other books around the subject of my current module.

This is very time consuming but to be expected at this level of study. However, not easy when you're working full time as well. We are halfway through the units of this module and have to submit a 3,000 word draft of our final assignment which essentially covers most if not all of the elements of our final assignment. It is an opportunity to take stock of how we are doing with the module content and begin thinking about our approach and arguments.

Module Tutors offer useful tips and hints for the assignment but until you begin putting pen to paper (metaphorically, since we are all using computers these days) it is not so easy. The practical parts of it I find much easier, such as the formatting.The referencing is not so easy, although there are clear guidelines, because it is very time consuming and cannot be done at the last minute. Building a bibliography takes time and I actually found this one of the most stressful activities, worrying about leaving something out.

My last two assignments were criticised because of their structure, yet I put a lot of effort into the layout and construction of the final assignments. It is clear that I still have a lot to learn and I think it will be useful to talk to our tutors at the residency about this, to see where I am going wrong.

Anyway, here goes again - hoping for a better result this time.

I have discovered a new trick with the pdf files and the Kindle. It you email the file to the Kindle, there is an App on the iPad, which allows you to merge with your Kindle, then download all the books to the iPad and read them on that. This means that you can then enlarge the pages and see the page numbers, which is not possible on the Kindle - a bit of a hindrance I found for notetaking.

Preparing for Ramadan again

This will be our second Ramadan in Doha and I hope that we will be better prepared this time than last year. We were hoping to spend part of it away this year but it has not worked out now that ictQATAR has changed the vacation rules for ex-patriates. We now have to take our annual leave in three blocks in line with Qatari employees as we are a Ministry and all government employees.

This means that we will be here for the whole of July and August, although we may be able to get away during the EID week. We usually get the whole week off.

Ramadan for government employees means that since the Muslims will be fasting, we will all be  working shorter hours. My working hours will be 8am to 1 pm - five hours in total. This might sound like a great deal but try fitting eight hours work into five hours to achieve the same results - it's not easy.

Next issue is that there is no tea/coffee service and the cafe is not open and obviously we have to respect the no eating and drinking rules since most of our work colleagues are fasting. If we do want to indulge, then we must be very discreet about it. This I don't mind - we are of course in a Muslim country and should respect their customs.

Everything closes down during the day, shopping malls, tourist attractions etc and don't open up until the evening, after the fast is broken. There is a brief period during the day for some shops which open, but you cannot get a drink of any sort, even water. We did discover last year, that the British cafe stayed open and provided you used the side entrance, they kept the blinds down, you were able to get a meal there.

All the hotel restaurants and bars which sell alcohol are closed of course for the entire month of Ramadan, so drinking is restricted totally to at home. The plus is that the liquor allowance we have is tripled to enable those who cannot do without, to buy extra, to see them through the month. Last year, we badly miscalculated how much Guinness to buy for Colin and it ran out very early.

One of the nicer parts is the Iftar celebration which takes place each evening when the fast is broken. Many restaurants and hotels put on extremely fancy meals in highly decorated and themed locations. If you are lucky you get invitations to some of the special ones.

On the whole though, it's a very quiet time.

Robert Kennedy College - MA - the online learning experience

Not to bore you too much with my studies, but since I am working on them, I thought I would have a themed entry to the blog today for all my e-learning colleagues who might be reading this and be interested in how the online experience is working for me.

It is very interesting to be experiencing it as a learner for a change and not as a practitioner or someone advising how to develop such a platform. I have enquired with the College, as to which platform is being used and apparently it is a bespoke one developed specially for RBK. Nevertheless, it is simple and seems to work well, from a learner perspective.

The learner engages with video lectures, downloads corresponding powerpoint slides, which form the lecture notes. There are reading lists in Word format and then discussion forums which follow the units in each module. We are required to engage in the forums as part of the assessment, although it is not clear how this is monitored. It is possible to see how many posts each students has made, and if you are following the thread on a particular forum, you know who is contributing and who is not. As ever, there are certain students who are the most frequent contributors and the most verbose.

Finally, we have to submit a mid-term draft assignment and then the final assignment, both of which are uploaded in either Word or pdf format to the system. All fairly straightforward. So far, the only hitch has been library access and having to read the books only via that access. Luckily a kind soul has been able to download many of the essential texts in pdf format and put them in Dropbox for us. This has made life a lot easier because they can now be read on the iPad or Kindle.

Hope you find this interesting.

Blogging with Robert Kennedy College

Now that I am almost half way through my MA, having successfully completed the first two modules and shortly to submit my mid-term assignment for my third, I can almost begin to believe that I might be able to succeed at this.

It is way tougher than I would have thought, but since I am working full time and a lot older, it is not perhaps surprising that studying comes a lot harder now. I think it's also fair to say, that the distractions of nice weather, a lovely swimming pool versus reading text books after work, makes for a difficult choice.

Since I'm never been a quitter, I will struggle on and am looking forward to going to Zurich in September for the residency when I will meet my online colleagues for the first time, face to face.