Re: active learning/teaching at the 7000 level

From: Barb Stuart (bstuart@uswest.net)
Date: Tue Jul 17 2001 - 16:08:20 PDT


thanks, all of you!

Here's what I did for today's class, with you in my mind:

I found an Instructional Designer who suggested I look over a text in ID.
It had many, many of the answers I was looking for about constructing
authentic learning objects and assessment tools.

I re-read an article by Hewitt and Scardamalia, out of OISE on Design for
Distributed knowledge (1997- the link is broken now). I reread Pea on
multimedia. I carefully read Molly's cite. I thought about Phillip Capper's
extoling me to be passionate. I thought about Phillip White saying I think
'let it evolve' and found that reiterated in Molly's cite too.

I constructed an exercise with the instructional designer for teams to use
Blackboard 5 in my HIgh Performance Management Classroom. I distributed a
worksheet describing how they could collect participation points from me by
even experimenting with various features of Blackboard. I talked about
Higher Order Thinking Skills.

During the two and a half hours I punctuated class by noting from their
various texts the importance of collaboration and cooperation, reiterated as
critical features of successful business people. We did a pre-test on the
software features to learn how many used these features. There was
additional support from the help desk staff helping them to use the software
to identify literature citations from the databases at the library, and on
the web. I asked them at one point to stop and announce one tip for making
this task go more smoothly, from each team. I noticed other teams noting
these tips. There was pretty high energy by the end; sluggish and worrisome
at first.

I asked them to reflect on what they learned. We will pick up again on
Thursday, then again twice next week.

I am trying to embed collaborative activity within the classroom norms.
There is some resistance, typically from the shining stars who like to work
alone and are heavily rewarded for this in other classes.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to me. I appreciate your wise
counsel very much.
Barb



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