Hello! My name is Mara and I started learning the IBDP Business and Management SL course with Pamoja in September 2019, and was researching the platform around 6 months prior to the start of the school year.
How my week looks
Every start of the week there are a couple of lessons available for me.These include information about a topic and some sort of activity, either a discussion where you have to respond to a question and another classmate’s response, or a writing activity to practise the material and for the format of the final exams.
For the written activity, you will always review assignments of peers and they will also review yours. I always try to check the platform once a day, I usually have it open together with my schools’ online platform. I just see if any assignments have been graded or any messages sent.
On the platform there is also a calendar which you can see, I use this to see when summative assignments will be coming up.
I work ahead when I know that either my Pamoja course or other subjects will require a lot of time from me and then I decrease the load of work for that actual week. This is something I really like (that it is an option) because this has helped me to decrease my stress levels a lot!
I should also mention that sometimes it is a struggle. I set out to plan in a couple of class periods besides my normal classes to solely work on Pamoja, but I am still working on this.
Usually my weeks look like this: the first three days I spend making notes on the information. Then I try to work on the assignments in the next few days, but honestly usually I finish these the day before the Pamoja week ends.
The Pamoja week actually starts on a Wednesday and ends on a Friday, this is really helpful because it allows me to divide my work better as I have the weekend to work on my Pamoja assignments.
Why you need self-management skills
It is really important that you are willing to learn to be good at self management. But I will say that as long as you are willing to learn it, you will be fine!
There are no reminders to tell you to do your work, so it can be easy to forget. If you are willing to learn how to succeed with Pamoja, then everything will be a struggle at first but you will get the hang of it.
To succeed with Pamoja there is no one way to do it, it differs per person and this experience will really help to understand your own way of working better.
What I wished I knew earlier
There are exams, these will be available online and then the student will have to create IB exam conditions on their own. These exams are very rare.
In exercises, like discussions, the whole year can send in what they think, so you will be in contact with everyone from the course. Only you will also have a section group, which has a section teacher and this teacher grades your work and keeps track of all the students in their section.
Live lessons are not happening very frequently, and if you are not able to join due to having class or it being during the night for where you live, you can watch a recording of the session. This recording is available on the platform!
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