Week 6 Reflections

This week's focus topics were cybercoaching, constructivism, and analyzing different course plans to clarify and identify components of effective learning.

As I was reading the article, "Cybercoaching: Rubrics, Metacognition, and Feedback, Oh My!" by Naomi Jeffrey Petersen, I studied the diagram of Chang and Petersen's Harmonic Feedback Loop with interest. In that diagram I could connect the process we use at WITC to develop and implement curriculum. The course design and stated objectives of the diagram parallel with our course outcome summaries and the teaching, learning, and assessment feedback loop represents what happens in the learning experiences designed by the instructors.

The Cybercoaching article contained many additional applications for implementing sound pedagogical practices online including personal feedback directly related to improving performance on the designated outcomes and using rubrics to facilitate learner independence and self evaluation. In my upcoming course, I want to pay particular attention to the coaching techniques regarding feedback to learners.

We also developed a pre-course survey to send to learners to gather information we can use to assess skills and knowledge learners have coming into the course. My survey focuses on technology and background in facilitating learning.

The final project draft is due next week. I want to get my learning objectives out on the practice post for feedback since they are in a format that is different than I'm used to. Looking at the objectives from a different perspective provides an opportunity to further clarify them - always a good practice.

Week 5 Reflections

The discussion board was on Bloom's Taxonomy was very interesting this week. Being able to interpret the level of an activity or assessment from a few sentences is not an easy task. At what age are learners able to work at the critical thinking levels? Are there different levels of critical thinking for different age groups?
I was recently introduced to a twist in Bloom's Taxonomy referred to as EASy - Evaluate, Analyze, and Synthesize - putting creating something new as the highest level of critical thinking. An article in APA Online titled Using the new Bloom's Taxonomy to Design Meaningful Learning Assessments explains the thinking that supports the shift.

The site on plagiarism was very informative. Though, as instructors if we move toward more authentic assessments that incorporate applied and personal experiences, the ability to plagiarize significantly decreases.

The activity of just considering how an activity meets or doesn't meet certain criteria for higher levels of a taxonomy is significant for our own practice. Are we asking learners to really dig into topics and discover, make connections, create something new? Then we will have created learning experiences that can't be copied from a book or the web, can't be memorized and forgotten.

Bloom's Taxonomy Assessment

One of this week's assignments was to review a unit and categorize the activities according to the level of Bloom's Taxonomy we thought it represented.

This task proved to be thought provoking and challenging. Assumptions had to be made about the details of the activities to categorize them. Not one student's taxonomy table was the same as another - some had similarities, but all had differences. This discussion board generated quite a bit of discussion.

Link to my taxonomy table.

Week 4 Reflections

This week seemed a little odd. Because our team finished our project early, it almost felt like we had the week off. We had a great team that rolled with the contributions of each other - no duplicated efforts, strong focus, and a common vision of the goal. Our product, the toolbox posted below, is concise and informative. When you can get past the idea that testing is the ultimate assessment tool, you are presented with a wide variety of possibilities that are more robust and inform you of students' skills and knowledge in a much deeper way than tests ever could.

Assessment Toolbox

Our midterm assignment was a collaborative group project to develop an assessment toolbox. Our group's toolbox is posted on my ePortfolio Assessment in E-Learning page.

Our toolbox came together smoothly, with each member taking on tasks and responsibilities as they presented themselves. Our group - Matt, Jennie, Laurie, and I - worked well together by building on each other's work and completing our individual tasks in an efficient and timely manner.

Week 3 Reflections

Curtis Bonk's article, "The Perfect E-Storm: emerging technology, enormous learner demand, enhanced pedagogy, and erased budgets" (2004) published by The Observatory on Higher Education generated quite a bit of discussion this week. The overall response to Bonk's list of 30 emerging technologies is a feeling of never being able to keep up. I guess you just start with something you think will help your students learn the content and see how it works. It could be easy to get caught up in the cool tools.

The electronic concept maps is one tool I can see a use for in my work. I've used concept mapping when I work with instructors to develop a new course using big paper and colored markers. Now I will have the option to use this strategy electronically. No more toting big rolls of paper around! I happened upon a list of 50 Uses for Inspiration on UW Stout's website. It might give a couple more ideas on how to use this tool.

The jigsaw midterm project should result in a useful list of tools for online teaching and learning. My teammates are go getters and I'm looking forward to working with them.

Concept Maps

This week's assignment was to write 2-5 learning objectives and incorporate them into a concept map for an online course. Putting the competencies in a concept map format provides a "big picture" image of the course and its components and their relationships.

I used Inspiration to develop my concept map for the course I teach online, Curriculum and Course Construction, a Wisconsin Technical College certification course. This format follows the Worldwide Instructional Design Software, WIDS, model utilized by the Wisconsin Technical College System. The learning objectives (called competencies in the WIDS model) I mapped include the following:

1. Examine performance based learning course design.
2. Develop competencies that describe intended learning outcomes.
3. Develop performance standards (criteria and conditions) for each competency.
4. Write learning objectives for your competencies.


As an assessment tool, having learners create concept maps can help instructors and learners determine whether they have captured the major points of a learning experience and detemine the relationships among them. It would be interesting to see the similarities and differences in individual concept maps at the end of a learning experience. What are students taking away from the experience?

Week 2 Reflections

Creating this blog was a new endeavor for me. Looking each other's blogs created a sense of community for me - seeing the choices made shows a little more of our personalities, incorporating the good ideas you see in other blogs into your own... The trick, as mentioned in the discussion board, will be to somehow manage viewing the blogs of others. Having the wiki with everyone's blog link is a handy tool.

There were so many interesting topics in the discussion board this week regarding discussion board/blog posts: assessment parameters, timelines, orientation to posting, benefits and challenges. I am going to storyboard a learning object for Wisc-Online about creating robust discussion posts and responses. Any ideas about what should be included would be welcomed.