Talk:Norana Cantrell Portfolio

Needs Assessment Feedback -- Dbyrne (talk) 15:08, 12 October 2014 (EDT) -- Dbyrne (talk) 15:08, 12 October 2014 (EDT)

Hi Norana,

You've made an excellent start in your needs assessment. I'm very excited to see this course unfold...I know I can learn a lot from it too. In general, right now my feedback touches on the same topics that I mentioned in my message to the whole class. As you continue to work on the needs assessment (it is a work in progress for weeks), think about how to include education research to demonstrate both the need/gap that this course will fill, and also demonstrate the educational benefits.

You're off to a great start!

Deb

Learning Objectives and other feedback -- Dbyrne (talk) 17:46, 29 October 2014 (EDT)

I see that you've made big changes in your needs assessment and included a sefl-designed survey. The results will be helpful especially if this is your intended audience. I think you still need to think and research some more about the educational benefits of using games in the classroom, and a gap or gaps that this might help fill. Play-based learning has been a major area of educational research, and it focuses on the concept of learning through creative and imaginative play in the classroom. Very constructivist. You could do some further reading on this topic in Google Scholar or our education databases in UAlbany's libraries online.

Once you work on your needs assessment some more (see my announcement to the whole class a couple of weeks ago), and through research you can provide the gaps that this instruction will fill...and other educational benefits...you may discover more on the assessment topic and a little bit more background information for your learners in Unit 1.

Looking at your objectives, I think you are on the right path, but they should follow the "ABCD" approach found in the ID text. Following that structure for your objectives will help you work out all of the elements that will be represented in some way in the mini-course.

You should also have your task analysis done before beginning work on the course itself. Let me know (via email) if you need some help with that.

Deb

More feedback! -- Dbyrne (talk) 17:38, 2 December 2014 (EST)

Hi Norana,

You've made a lot of good progress on this very creative, unique professional development course. I can see in practice that it can have a large amount of interactivity, even if the course is solely online. Some of those interactive strengths include the discussion opportunities that you've included, peer review for lesson plans, and teacher reflection (the participant interacting here with their own thoughts!).

Some minor feedback to help you fine-tune the mini-course itself: - try to edit the language in the "Preparation" segments of the modules...a little less repetitive to keep interest....and there's a pronoun typo. (minor stuff) -Unit 2 - Perhaps have the participants review and share their lessons here? -Unit 3 - (less minor) Try to avoid the use of the word "should" here in terms of expectations of familiarity of the games. Unless it is a pre-requisite, you don't want to appear exclusive. If your participants are not familiar with them, what are you going to provide to support them so that they can proceed through this unit? Perhaps for example, offer resources like www.madlibs.com - "History" section, which allows others to get snapshots, backgrounds, visuals, of the games? Maybe Youtube has some fun videos?

This is really coming together well. I would like to participate in this course! One last thing that is helpful for learners, particularly in an environment when they are more in isolation, is to perhaps provide the learning objectives for each unit within the mini-course modules.

I hope you find this helpful.

Good work! Deb