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ETAP 623 Spring 2023 Design Project Agenda

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<<Back to class project home ETAP 623 Spring 2023 (Zhang)

MOD 1: Register with the Wiki so that you can edit

  • Register a username: Please wait for our UAlbany ITS team to create an account for each of class members. Your username will be your NetID. You will receive an email with auto-generated password. After receiving it, you should login KNITL soon and set a new password of your choice.

MOD 2: Learn to create, format, and link Wiki-pages

1) Learn how to edit, format, create, and link wiki-pages. These are what we need to know to complete the Design Project.

  • Feel free to try any of the editing tricks in Sandbox page.

2) Create a personal portfolio page which will serve as your planning document recording your design process. Go to the class' homepage on KNILT (click navigation button TO CREATE: Current Classes to find your class home page), add your name on the list of members, mark your name as a link to a new page (i.e. put it in "[[ ]]"), click "save" to save the page. Then your name will be shown in red in the page. Click your name to start to create your page. You may use this page Project Portfolio Page Template as a template to set up your personal portfolio page. Click Edit on the top of this page, select all the text, copy, go to your own page, paste and then change the name to yours, save.In your page, please try using headings, bulletin lists, pictures using the toolbar.

MOD 3: Learn to create, format, and link Wiki-pages continued, Generate topic ideas

  • Make sure that you have an outline of sub-headings on your page.
  • Post to the Design Project Ideas discussion space in BLS a brief description of one or more possible mini-course topics and give feedback to others' topics. The instructor will review your proposal and give feedback too. As soon as you've decided your topic with the instructor's confirmation, you need to find and read key references on that topic as early as possible.
  • A few example topics that may be interesting to you and helpful for teacher learners:
  • A few example topics that may be interesting to you and helpful for teacher-learners:

- Innovative strategies to support students' learning and teacher practices during the pandemic and beyond, integrating flexible teaching methods, technology tools, educational resources, and social supports (including families and communities)

- Education for civil engagement (an example resource: http//www.esdpodcast.org, Interviews with leaders, innovators, and researchers in civic and environmental education)

- Global, multicultural awareness

- Civic reasoning with evidence to think critically about social issues (https://cor.stanford.edu/)
- Create a productive learning community
- Develop healthy mindsets, resilience, and characters
- Productive ways to use Response to Intervention [1]
- New ways to assess student progress and provide feedback in the contexts of NGSS, Common Core...
- Productive use and mining of educational data

- Teaching/learning data science/data literacy

- Learning analytics and educational data use

- Engage students in creative learning, inquiry and collaboration using new pedagogies such as Knowledge Building [2], project-based inquiry [3], and collaborative learning, IQWST (http://activatelearning.com/iqwst/) etc.


- Build cross-curriculum connections to support sustained deep learning (e.g. Reading like a historian https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons)

- Supporting ENL/ESL learners in content areas
- The use of new technology tools and environments, such as maker tools and spaces, games, collaborative digital environments such as Idea Thread Mapper (https://idea-thread.net), Knowledge Forum (https://thelearningexchange.ca/pdf/knowledge-building-gallery/), and WISE (https://wise.berkeley.edu), MOOC, intelligent tutoring


- Connect formal learning with informal learning in museums, at home, in community [4]

- Place based learning (https://www.edutopia.org/practice/place-based-learning-connecting-kids-their-community)
- Support students with various learning difficulties
- Support teacher development and innovation in professional learning communities
- Strategies to better support diverse, often disadvantaged learners
- Create safe and healthy school environments
- School-parent collaboration
- Build strong character and socio-emotional skills
- Develop 21st-century competencies, such as creativity, problem-solving, technology literacy, computational thinking practices, cultural competency, etc.
- Develop teacher leaders, create professional learning communities for school innovation
- Create school-community partnerships - Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories, a web-based tool for early childhood educators to learn about how children think and learn about mathematics and how to teach mathematics to young children (birth to age 8).https://www.learningtrajectories.org/
- Create an equitable and just learning environment to support diverse learners ...

- Climate education: https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/12

- Designing 3-D assessments for NGSS: https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/34 https://stemteachingtools.org/pd/sessiond; https://www.nextgenscience.org/assessment-resources/assessment-resources; https://concord.org/our-work/research-projects/next-generation-science-assessment/

- Spatial reasoning in math classrooms: https://dreme.stanford.edu/news/spatial-reasoning-why-math-talk-about-more-numbers

- Changing and nurturing classroom talk and discourse: https://ifl.pitt.edu/accountable-talk/

See General Suggestions and Feedback on topic selection.

MOD 4: Define the topic and potential scope of learning outcomes

  • Describe the topic and purpose of your mini-course in your portfolio page. In light of the readings of this week, analyze what types of learning outcomes you will address focusing on the topic you've decided on: What are the key learning components that may be involved ranging from conceptual (key ideas and perspectives of thinking) to procedural (how to), to attitudinal (value…)? Here's an example portfolio page: Gërt Arnold Portfolio Page (THIS IS HIS FINAL VERSION. YOU'LL BE WRITING UP YOUR SECTIONS THROUGHOUT THIS COURSE). (You will create statements of the performance-based objectives in Mod 6. So at this point in Mod 4, you do not need to worry about the specific wording.)

MOD 5: Needs Assessment and Learner Analysis

  • Conduct needs assessment (if possible for your context, optional) and learner analysis focusing on the topic you’ve chosen, report your work under the heading Needs Assessment/Learner Analysis on your portfolio page. For examples, please see: Anne Canale Stalnecker and Diane Hamilton. Anne's needs assessment was based on literature review and personal speculation. Diane did a survey among teachers for her needs assessment. These are both acceptable for this class.

'** Unify terms for naming the learners: Please use "participant" for teachers who will take our mini-courses (e.g., after completing this course, participants will be able to...), "students" for students of the teachers.'

MOD 6: Performance objectives

  • Identify and write performance objectives for your overall wiki-course (not the units yet). The objectives need to describe what the learner will be able to perform/do as the result of taking this course, not what they will be doing (e.g. read, learn, discuss, watch) in this course. Put the objectives into your portfolio page under the heading "Performance Objectives."
  • The objectives of your course should focus on “big ideas” related to the selected topic (i.e., ideas that can transform teachers’ understanding of and approaches to learning).
  • Should be communicated using clear, performance-based terms.
  • It is very likely that you'll need to modify these objectives as you proceed, but writing them down as clearly as you can help you clarify where you are going.
  • Here's a useful resource recommended by an ETAP 623 member: http://www.aafp.org/dam/AAFP/documents/cme/faculty_development/LearningObjectivesGuidelines.pdf

MOD 7 and 8: Content and Task analysis, Sequencing

  • Based on the target learning objectives you've identified last week, conduct a task analysis to identify prerequisites (enabling and supportive objectives) for each of the target objectives.
  • Sequence the learning objectives and their prerequisites (enabling and supportive capabilities), organize corresponding content into small units. Represent the structure of your whole course using an instructional curriculum map, update your portfolio wiki-page to report the above work. Use headings such as Task Analysis and or Instructional Map. Using "Upload File" to upload your map as a pdf file with a unique filename. (I understand that many of you still need some time to read more and think more about your topics, so the map may be modified.)
  • Create your mini-course's home/intro page. This is the page that your prospective learners will review to see if they are interested and how to navigate. "Sell" your course with an engaging image, intro and/or description of the course. Include links to each (probably empty) unit page, your portfolio and the course home/intro page. See this as an example: Strategies for Promoting Scientific Inquiry Skills in the K-12 Curriculum.

    To start your your mini-course's home/intro page, click Edit on our class homepage, add the title of your mini-course after your name on the member list, mark is as a link to a new page with the same title (i.e. put it in "[[ ]]"). Once saved the title will be shown in red. Clicking the red title will take you to a new blank page which you will use to build your course units(i.e., the entry page for your end-users, not the portfolio page, which is for your planning/designing in the backstage). You may use this page as a template to set up your front page: Mini-Course front page template (edit this course, select all, copy, then go to edit your course front page, paste)

MOD 9 Development begins. Set up your course home/intro page with unit/lesson objectives, start to draft your units

  • Continue your work on your mini-course intro/home page: Create objectives for each unit on the intro page, aligning them to your plan - particularly your instructional curriculum maps - making sure they are properly sequenced and connected. See General_Suggestions_and_Feedback#Common_Issues
  • Start to draft one learning unit in preparation of the developmental tryout.

MOD 10 Development continues. Methods and content, review plans and draft unit/lesson one

  • Begin to develop the specifics of your Wiki-course. Consider content blocks/units and their connections, instructional methods such as media use, opportunities for project-based learning and interactive learning wherever they are applicable. How might you support a learning community in an online asynchronous course? Feel free to post any of these ideas to your portfolio (not required, but might be helpful)

ID Project Development, tryout, and refinement

Apr 24 – 30

  • Draft at least one sample learning unit.
  • Developmental tryout: Working in small groups (to be set up on the class' Wiki homepage), each of you will try out the prototype units developed by your group members and provide feedback. Please go to your peers' courses, pretend to be a target learner/user, read the course-level and unit-level learning objectives, and go through materials/activities provided in the prototype unit, reflect on your learning experience, and provide feedback regarding the following issues:
  • Overall: Can this unit help me learn something meaningful and achieve the stated objectives?
  • Specific issues: see Evaluation criteria, the 80% part.
  • Please email your feedback directly to the author/designer of the mini-course, cc'ing etap623@gmail.com . To make this a positive experience please frame your feedback in two sections 1) I liked/What works well, and 2) Have you considered this? Email your feedback to your peer by May 2.

ID Project work, May 1-8

  • Use the feedback you received to improve your course. Do you need to update your objectives on your portfolio? Do you need to improve your methods in your first unit? Add media, incorporate active/interactive activities/self-assessment? Here're a few common issues to keep in mind: https://knilt.arcc.albany.edu/General_Suggestions_and_Feedback#Common_Issues.
  • Build out the rest of your units/lessons with an eye on the Evaluation criteria.
  • Add a few Category tags to the front page of your mini-course to highlight your themes and ease user search/use. See KNILT Category Tags. Please select/add at least one tag from the list of"Learning Contexts," one (or more) from "Learning Areas," and one (or more) regarding the content focus.
  • Post a personal reflection in the Discussion Area on Blackboard: "ID Project Reflection": (a) What are the most important things you've learned through this project? (b) What suggestions do you have for future students re. how they may best approach this project?
  • Feel free to ask your peers or email me for help.

Complete your whole project, due 11:59pm on May 8, 2023

  • Finish your mini-course with attention to the Evaluation criteria. (You don't need to do anything to "submit" this project. When you are done, just leave your mini-course and your linked portfolio page there for me to review.)



  1. ↑ http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/what/whatisrti
  2. ↑ https://thelearningexchange.ca/pdf/knowledge-building-gallery/
  3. ↑ http://www.umich.edu/~pbsgroup/
  4. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_learning
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