I have now completed lesson 15, the last lesson in this level and the final lesson for this assignment. I certainly have learnt a lot about the Greek language and I am able to say a number of useable phrases. I can now look at Greek words and break them up phonetically so the course has been successful. I have certainly met my expectations for the course and overall it has been well presented and very easy to follow. The discussion forums and chat room in particular have been very valuable resources. The degree of collaboration between the students and facilitators has also been exceptional. I would recommend this course for any one wanting to learn the Greek language. This course was only the start of the journey as it was only the first half of the Elementary level, there are two intermediate and two advanced courses to follow which I am intending to follow through to.

Three hours into the course, have reached lesson 10. Although each lesson is around fifteen minutes have needed to revisit each lesson a number of times. Still no issues with the course, apart from there not being any formal quizzes included in the course. In the discussion forums some of the students have actually created review questions and these have been posted in the duscussion forums for all to use. You might call it Learner-Centred learning.

Reached halfway point – 2 hours. The lessons continue in same vein. Finding it easier to phonetically identify the greek letters. Still need to revisit each lesson several times. The discussion forums and chat room are a definite plus.

Have completed lesson three. The point of this assignment is to critique the actual course itself so I will try and keep my comments to how the course is presented and any failings or otherwise. So far the pace of the course is very good and the quality of the audio is very good. The presenters are very clear in their speech and the explanations as we move into new sections are well presented. I have found the discussion forums to be extremely helpful with a lot of additional information provided by fellow students and the course facilitators.

One novel feature is each lesson has a personal journal with which you can use to reflect on each lesson and make any comments on the lesson itself. These journals are submitted to the course facilitators for use as student feedback, very interesting.

Have completed first lesson. I have needed to visit other sites to gain additional information on pronunciation. The audio part of the lesson is quite good, however when required to repeat phrases the time given is inadequate and hence have had to make use of the pause button on the media player. Not sure how often the phrases ‘this is a book’ (Αυτο ειναι βιβλιο) or ‘this is a pencil’ (Αυτο ειναι μολυβι) would come in handy but you never know. One very good feature of this course is that you can print the lesson notes and follow along. I have used these notes to write each word phonetically, which by the way comes from the Greek word phntikos. So (Αυτο ειναι βιβλιο) becomes “Afto enay vivlio”.

Have spent the first half hour going through the introductory sections on the Greek Alphabet and Handwriting as well as how to set up my computer with Greek fonts and reset the keyboard to a Greek layout there is also two questionnaires to complete on what I value in an online learning experience and also what my attitudes are towards studying and learning. This information is then submitted for student survey purposes. I have also explored the discussion forum to get a feel for the course and read other students experiences. There are several links to other sites with audio sections on pronunciation and grammar structure. Will explore these further as required. With this background knowledge I am ready for the first lesson.

The home page for this site has a number of support and general information pages. Some of these are, News Forum; Technical Questions; Site News; Chat Room; Instructions; General Language Questions; and, a Contact Us link. There is very little advertising and what there is is very understated.

You now have a choice of courses to enrol in from Elementary through to Advanced. For my purpose I am choosing Greek 101 (Elementary) and the main page for this has quite an array of choices some of which are pasted below.

Activities Chats Activities Chats

Documents Relevant to All Lessons News forum Your Suggestions for Improvement Books for this course General Chat Room for Greek 101 Anyone from… ? Greek handwriting questions Greek alphabet questions Greek font/keyboard questions Greek music Dictionary for Lessons 1-15

In addition to these choices there is an Administration box, Lates News, Online Users and Course that you are enrolled in.

The central section has the individual lessons listed and you can move freely forwards or backwards as required. The first lesson has the most content

Lesson 001

Audio For Lesson 001

Notes For Lesson 001

The One Accent System

The Greek Alphabet 1

The Greek Alphabet 2

Greek Alphabet Handwriting

Greek Keyboard

Installing Greek Fonts on your Computer

Questionnaire 1 – what you value in an online learning experience

Questionnaire 2 – your attitudes towards studying and learning

Personal Journal For Lesson 001

Discussion Forum For Lesson 001 All the other lessons only have the Audio, Notes, Personal Journal and Discussion Forum. Now that I have established the layout of the course site I will now begin the learning process.

  The online course that I have chosen for this assignment is Learn Greek Online. The Site is sponsored by Cyprus Broadcasting Association and a site known as ΚΥΠΡΟΣ-Νet or Kypros-Net. This site is an internet information resource centre organization which has a goal to utilize the internet and particularly the World Wide Web system for the promotion of the world of Cyprus.

You are required to set up a free account through a registration process. The site does ask for donations of $1 – $20 towards helping with site development costs if you like the course and they have a facility on their site for that purpose. Once registered the courses are free and the site offers courses in Modern Greek from Elementary level through to Advanced level. It also offers a course in ancient Greek.

The site does not have stated objectives or outcomes as such but simply states that the course is provided to teach the modern Greek language.

My expectations are that after four hours I will have a much better understanding of the Greek language, both written and verbal and be able to speak some fairly simple phrases.

As far as the learning experience is concerned I hope it will be a positive one with well presented and easy to understand course content.

I am hoping there will be good support considering it is a course about learning to speak a foreign language. I would expect there will be sufficient resources to accommodate students from beginner level upwards.

The lesson commenced with a discussion of the reading for the week. The discussion was very interesting with many students entering into the discussion presenting their views on Watkins’ comments. Generally the class agreed with his views, especially with the statement that not all learners are suited to e-learning. The ‘Readiness Surveys’ created some healthy debate with some comments that the quoted questions were not relevant to todays’ students whilst other comments felt that the questions used were relevant for the target audience who were US Coastguard staff.

Assessment Task 3 was then discussed looking at the needs of this assessment task. It was noted that Activity 3.3 needs to be completed prior to commencing the online course. This allows each student to state what are the stated course objectives and outcomes and what were their expectations of the course. This information will be relevant when the reflection of the course is carried out.  

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