Final Project (final post!)

Instructional Design eCourse – Final Project

ONE: A description of your environment: your teaching scenario, learners, purpose or end goal, and timeline. Are you teaching face-to-face or online? Is this a tutorial or a course? A one-shot library instruction session? Be specific.

My focus for this course / final project is be the credit course I will be teaching in January at California State University, East Bay. It is a two-unit, freshman-level course. Each section has approximately 30 students. It is a 10 week course, and the instructor can choose how many of the weeks have an in-person meeting vs. "online meeting" (via Blackboard). At this point, I'm planning for 8 in person meetings/weeks (1 hour, 50 minute classes) and 2 "online" weeks (when students will be meeting with me to discuss their research projects, and class content will be available via Blackboard).  For the in-class meetings, we will be in one of the two library classrooms. Neither classroom is outfitted with computers, but laptop carts are available to provide laptops for students on the days they are needed. They do have furniture that can be moved to suit a variety of learning activities. There is projection capabilities for both the instructor and student presentations. 

TWO: Your learning outcomes. These should be based on the needs and expectations of your environment. Are these outcomes appropriate for your learners?

The learning outcomes for the credit course I’ll be teaching are derived from the ACRL Information Literacy Standards, and are as follows:

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:

1.     Determine the extent of information needed

2.     Access the needed information

3.     Evaluate information and it sources critically

4.     Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose

5.     Access and use information ethically and legally and understand that there are ethical, legal, and socioeconomic issues surrounding information and information technology

These are the learning outcomes for the course that are shared across the twenty or so sections of the course that are taught each quarter. They are appropriate for the goals of the course.

THREE: How will you assess your learners? What formative and summative assessments would best fit in your teaching scenario? Do they align with your outcomes?

The summative assessment for the course is a signature assignment (a reflective essay) that is assigned in all sections of the course.  A rubric is used to score a random selection of assignments across the sections. 

In terms of formative assessment within the section I will be teaching, I will use and/or develop rubrics that relate to the student learning outcomes for the course and tie those to individual activities/ assignments so that students know what I am looking for and exactly how their work will be evaluated. Those rubrics will be shared with students in advance so they can check their own work prior to submitting it for grading. I think the suggestions in the Fink document to have students receive feedback on either a low-stakes assignment or a non-graded assignment prior to the first graded work would be helpful to demonstrate to students how grading/assessment will be performed in the course, so they can see the “rubric in action” if they haven’t already seen it in previous courses.

FOUR: Learning theories and other instructional approaches to implement. What learning theories best support your outcomes? How might you leverage these theories to develop content and assessments?

I think the constructivist approach best matches what I plan to use in the credit course. I will be designing activities that have students pull on existing knowledge and wrestle with questions/prompts that I provide in order to come to their own conclusions. Having as many hands on / exploratory activities as possible where the students are asked to complete and reflect on a particular task without a lot of prior instruction (demo-ing) I think it the best way for students to be able to internalize a particular skill / behavior with the hope that it will transfer to other, non-classroom contexts. Building reflection into the in-class learning activities will be one form of formative assessment, as well as have in-class learning activities that feed into the formal assignments / graded assessments for the course.

FIVE: What tools will you use to deliver this content and have learners interact with your instruction? What might work best and why?

For my final project, I can think of several educational technologies / tools that would be appropriate. First is Blackboard, the Learning Management System used on the CSUEB campus - though the majority of the course I will be teaching will be in person, there are a couple of "online" sessions for the course where I will be posting videos / screencasts / other content.  Blackboard will also provide the central "warehouse" for all of the instructional objects I want to share with my students. For those videos / screencasts, I may use Jing, which I've used in the past, or VoiceThread, which is new to me, but it is a tool that my library has a site license for and other instructors at my institution have used successfully.  I'll also use some of the basic functions of Blackboard like the forums, quizzes, and grading module to increase engagement with the instructional material and provide formative assessment opportunities.

SIX: Reflect on what you have learned. What has been most useful? What do you feel you are still struggling with? How has this course changed how you approach instruction?

I think this class has been incredibly helpful, especially in terms of directing me to resources that will continue to inform my instructional practice in the future.  I wish I had had the time to dedicate to completely mapping out my 10 week course as part of this course, but I haven’t been able to find the time to do that. I hope to carve out the time to do that in the next two months (before January and that first day of class rolls around!) and I feel like this course has given me some really helpful tools/guidelines to inform that work for me to head into the classroom with confidence that I’m providing an educational experience for the students that is interesting, thought-provoking, and is closely tied to the learning outcomes for the course with formative assessment opportunities that really help students to know what they are learning and where they are struggling, hopefully to help them all succeed in the course.

SEVEN: Finally, did you find any of your coursemates' blogs particularly helpful? Link to any particularly useful posts or entire blogs from your peers. What have you learned from your peers? Did you add any additional resources to the Zotero group that you find exciting or interesting?

I think I learned a lot from the different approaches that people take – we are all struggling with common issues, but we take different approaches to solve those issues. I’ve found several ideas that I’m going to try and implement in my own instruction (either wholesale or with some tweaking to better suit my “authentic teacher self” J).  As far as the Zotero Group, I haven’t explored it much at this point but I know that it will be a great resource as I work to map out my entire 10-week class as well as for future revisions to the class that I’m teaching.