Talk:The Hudson River as the Context for Learning

Instructor comments on your project -- Jz833665 11:41, 10 November 2011 (EST)

Susan, your project is addressing a very interesting topic, addressing an important need through a new and proper learning approach. Your needs assessment is solid and helpful. However, your performance objectives need to be much more specific. "After working through this mini course developed as a professional development experience, participants will be knowledgeable on the approach of place based education" give a definition of it? give examples, tell reasons of why???

"confident in where and how to access resources related to teaching content on the Hudson River or Hudson Valley" Find resources online and offline... show "confident" not "tell."

" develop a framework to create an inquiry based project to be woven into their curriculum." elaborate on "framework", does it include a framework of thinking, lesson plans, facilitation...?

Instructor comments on your outline -- Jz833665 11:48, 29 November 2011 (EST)

Hi Susan., Your course outline looks well structured and content rich. Please work out your whole mini-course as you've planned.

Peer Review -- Joe.Walker 20:08, 29 November 2011 (EST)

Hi Susan, Overall, I think this has some very firm groundwork in place and I get a general understanding of what I will accomplish. I am not sure about the instructional sequence in unit 1 though. Is there a way to create a scenario, maybe a webquest, which might help me explore all of the reading information?

I would like to see a small section with references that provides me with a general idea or definition of place based education. This would be great as part of the overview for your project.

The performance objectives are very broad and I’m not sure they meet all of Gagne’s criteria for outcomes/goals. You may want to look at pg 134 again as I too struggled with the wording of my objectives to meet Gagne’s rigor.

Educator survey: I like the use of the survey instrument for your needs analysis. Is it possible to link the FB pages you mention? Learning Outcomes: all nicely done and fits more with Gagne. However, in what way will the learner “understand” the natural history, how will they demonstrate this understanding? In addition, will your learners be using anything special to define things? Like will the definition be done verbally? Written?

Instructional Map: I couldn’t get the link to open for me.

Units for learning: What are the goals for each unit and how do they link to the course goals? I see that your title of Unit one reflects the first course goal but are there any sub goals that each unit might address? For instance, in #1, you want me to explore websites to gain understanding and you provide links to a couple of good web sites but what questions should I be thinking about when I explore each site? There seems to be a large amount of reading in this unit. Exactly what am I suppose to accomplish by reading the 2 books in #3? Do I really need to read the entire books or are their sections you’d want me to focus upon? Or are these really more of a reference?

I am encouraged by your work and would love to see how the other units progress to accomplish your goals.

Peer review User: Nicole Carey Decebmer 8th 11:10

Susan,

I really like your topic, especially since we live near the Hudson River. It is a really interesting thing to be able to actually see what you are learning about while you are learning.

I was having a bit of a hard time following your format as everything was all on one page. I'm not sure if this is how you designed it or not. I also would love to see the objectives for each unit, although I really liked the key questions for each of your units, they help to focus in on what will be talked about when we actually go through the unit. Some graphics also might help break up the pages as well.

The links were all very informative and interesting. They enhance the lessons so that you are hitting several different learning styles, not only one. I also liked your extra resources for each unit, just in case a students wanted to go deeper into the topic on their own!

Overall I really liked your lessons!