By Yumi Kimura from Yokohama, JAPAN (so happy smiling cat) [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Here is my Final Project post.
Description of
Environment
When I started this course, I had big ambitions. My initial
goal was to design a 16-week, for-credit credit course that aligns with the
student learning outcomes for Freshman Foundations, a form of FYE instruction.
The course will be delivered face-to-face to between 25 and 30 students and
meet twice a week for one hour and fifteen minutes per session. This new course
will use team-teaching with two librarians sharing duties. Because this course
must align with the student learning outcome set by the university, it will not
be restricted to just library instruction, but will cross over into critical
thinking and writing.
While this lofty goal will unfold over the next two months,
for the purpose of this course, I had to scale back the scope to a single
activity: the assessing authority exercise.
Learning Outcomes
The current student
learning outcome for Freshman Foundations is as follows: The student
critically analyzes and communicates complex issues and ideas. Ideally,
the course will incorporate the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for
Higher Education as the underlying structure.
As the scope narrowed to a single activity, the original
goals changed to be more in line with the single exercise: As a result of the
authority module, 80% of the class will be able to recognize the difference
between a credible authority that could be used in a college-level paper and a
not so credible authority.
Assessment
This single activity will be formative as it is a low stakes
exercise; however, the full-length course will be a combination of formative
and summative assessment. Since the university requires a minimum of two
summative assessments, a final project and a final exam, the formative
assessments can be building blocks and can have more instructive feedback. The
balance between the two will be a gateway to reaching the course outcomes.
Learning Theories
As I stated in my previous blog post, constructivism seems
to be the best theory. For my activity on evaluating authority, taking a
constructivist approach is the most viable. Students will be starting with a
question, “which source is the most credible for a college-level paper,” and
debate the merits of each of their example sources. The sources will not be
identified as website, magazine article, or journal article. Instead, students
will need to “discover their own truths” through using the evaluation worksheet.
Although this activity is not as open-ended as one described in Cooperstein and
Kocebar-Weideinger (2004), using a blind approach can allow students the same
opportunity as ask increasingly complex questions about authority. After
students have arranged their sources in a credibility hierarchy, the entire
class can have an open discussion about the order and the underlying reasons
why sources were ranked ion that order.
This activity would meet the aspects of constructivist
lessons explained in Good and Brophy (as cited in Cooperstein &
Kocebar-Weidinger, 2004, p. 142). Allowing students to create their own
hierarchy allows them to construct meaning. In addition, the hierarchy will
build upon what they already know about source evaluation. Since this is a
group activity, social interaction will enhance the experience. Finally,
defining the hierarchy as the order that students would place their sources
according to credibility mimics the real-world experience that they have
whenever they are tasked with writing a paper.
Tools
For the overall course, some delivery tools will be used.
For example, students will be posting to a blog in Blackboard. In terms of
content, I have already selected several TED Talks to use as discussion starts.
I also plan on using a Google Hangout for students to use during class discussion.
This will serve as a record of the day’s discussion as well as allowing
students who may be reluctant to speak in class the opportunity to have their
voices heard.
After reviewing my learning goal for the authority
exercise--As a result of the authority module, 80% of the class will be able to
recognize the difference between a credible authority that could be used in a
college-level paper and a not so credible authority--I realized that the first
part of the exercise will be completely old school, no tech. Students will have
paper copies of three different types of sources: a website, a
magazine article, and a journal article. This is a group exercise, so students
will get an opportunity to discuss. Once they have created
a hierarchy based on only the paper materials, they can then use
their computers (moving into standard tech) to see how their
initial hierarchy compares to the reality of the source authority. At
this point, they can revert to their comfort level of digital searching.
Time to Reflect
Taking this class allowed me to take a step back and
re-evaluate the courses that I currently teach. Although I didn’t follow the
concept of backward design, somehow, my courses ended up in the right place. I
do see how this process can help beginning instructors, and I do think that I
will follow the steps that we’ve covered as I create the Freshman Foundations
course. I had already designed the rough outline of for what and when, so I
will be curious to see if using the concepts we learned actually makes a
difference from the process that I have used in the past.
Classmates’ Blogs
I haven’t followed one blog from beginning to end due to
time constraints. Instead, I have jumped from blog to blog, reading posts that
sounded interesting. There are bits and pieces that I found helpful. I enjoyed
Michelle DeMars’ blog, Kathy Anderson’s blog, and Amanda Starkel’s blog. I
apologize to those classmates whose blogs I did not have a chance to read.
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