MeTL

An open realtime system to manage learning

Academy

How do I teach with MeTL?

Why do I teach with MeTL?

Do you want your students to be more engaged and interactive? Do you want your students to be able to contribute to class discussion with the safety of anonymity, and have a permanent record of the class activity? Would you like to have immediate feedback of individual and class understanding? I do, and that is why I teach with MeTL.

MeTL (Monash e Teaching and Learning) was conceived in the eEducation Centre at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The “e” is deliberately undefined and could stand for “engaging”, “enabling”, or “empowering”. Pedagogy, the method and practice of teaching, has its origins in the Greek “to lead a child”. Teaching is named before Learning, even though learning by the student is the ultimate goal, because learning is more effective when guided by an informed teacher.

Being informed about everyone in the class, however small the class may be, is very difficult, even for the most experienced and empathetic teacher; but is harder as classes get larger. MeTL empowers and informs teachers who are critical in promoting successful knowledge transfer in all students, not just those who catch the teacher’s eye.

Teachers have to manage classes of students with different levels of prior knowledge, experience, motivation and confidence. Enabling effective learning and engaging every student in a class, each in their unique Zone of Proximal Development, is a significant task. Delivering content, explanations and context in a language that every student understands is a huge and often underestimated challenge. To successfully guide and promote the transfer of knowledge into permanent memory, which is learning, is daunting.

The more informed the teacher is about their class’s progress, the more effective they can be. Relevant information comes from many sources, some outside the immediate experience of the teacher in the classroom. MeTL shares student activity with the teacher, and with other students. MeTL uses this information to provide many sources of immediate feedback, which the teacher can choose to share with the class or manage privately. But MeTL can also, with the appropriate integration, gather and analyse information from many sources to help, for example, in suggesting effective group membership, or identify, as early as possible, students who are at risk.

By engaging students in the learning journey from the beginning, rather than presenting them with the end of the journey, which is too often a characteristic of a pre-prepared presentation, learning and teaching is more rewarding, enjoyable and effective.

Watch MeTL in action at Saint Leo University.