Written by Amelia from Gjøvik videregående skole, Norway
As I progress further into the school year, I have become increasingly aware of how much knowledge I acquired in the previous year. Now that we have done quite a few assessments in both classes, I can say that Pamoja Online Courses were the right choice for me.
What has really helped me thrive this year is the enhanced communication with our teachers through the new platform, Managebac. Before this transition to ManageBac, I was already familiar with the platform, yet I didn’t fully understand just how much it could improve my learning experience. My school uses it simply for task submissions and to upload resources, so when the Pamoja year started I was a bit sceptical.
However, this apprehension was soon put to rest. I had never really embraced the communication features of ManageBac before but now, I feel like I have a much swifter communication with my teachers. Using the discussion filtering feature, I now find it so much easier to keep up to date with the class discussions and important messages from my teachers. These new communication features have made it even easier to sign up for things such as the Oral discussion for my French course. This discussion feature also has enhanced my communication with my peers. Now, due to how we can filter the discussions, it is easier to see the responses that others leave on my comments and it is easier for me to respond, whether that be with an emoji reaction or a reply.
To build on to the discussion filtering feature, I think that the new calendar feature has completely revolutionised how I plan my time. Last year with the old platform, I struggled to manage my time beyond the week I was in but now, with the calendar I can differentiate which tasks are summative and formative and the classes that they belong to. The ability to navigate from the calendar has greatly improved my time management skills. This is because I can simply click on the task in the calendar and go directly to the overview which allows me to see what is required for each task. This is super helpful as I used to somehow manage to schedule many complex tasks for the same day but now, I spread them out over the week to avoid getting overwhelmed. This is also very helpful for me as it ensures that I don’t feel overwhelmed. Through this feature, it is quite simple to see what is happening from month to month. I am sure this feature will continue to prove fruitful with the approach of the exam season wherein an organised schedule will be key.
Another new feature which I have come to love is how centralised everything is. I no longer browse through numerous tabs to find what I am looking for because the task overview, weekly lessons and feedback are all in one place for each class. For me, this has made it so much easier to keep track of what I need to do each week. This overview has also made the peer review process for my business class simpler as it is now much more streamlined.
Before this year, I never thought it would be possible to actually learn from Managebac but now, with the introduction of the Study Mode for each of my classes I have become a lot more focussed. Study Mode is set up in a way where I am not tempted with distractions. This has really let me dive deep into the course content without getting distracted. It has also made it much easier to understand the connections between topics and sub-topics, which is hugely beneficial in learning a language such as French. I am really enjoying how the course resources are directly integrated into the study mode – this means that I don’t need to go to another webpage to learn more content.
Looking forward, I believe that due to the increased organisational features, the Pamoja Managebac platform will help me in developing knowledge in the respective subjects but also to succeed in the exams due to the organisational features and the sense of community it establishes. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how my learning improves with Pamoja’s ManageBac integration over the course of the year!
