Talk:Unit 1 - The 21st Century Learner
Discussion Page for Peer Review -- Yvonne Koulikov (talk) 19:05, 22 April 2013 (EDT)
I am looking forward to getting feedback on Unit 1 from classmates.
Sarah Morehouse
Learning Outcomes
State your learning outcomes in complete sentences. You can have an introductory sentence and then bullet points, or you can make it a paragraph. But just listing them like that makes it seem incomplete and not very appealing for the learner to pay attention to.
"Participate in online discussion forum" is not a learning objective. It is something you want them to DO in order to learn or demonstrate learning, but it is not something you want them to learn.
"List" and "define" are not higher order cognitive skills. That's not inherently bad, but I think you will need your learners to have a deeper, more sophisticated grasp of the concepts of 21st century learners and of BYOD in order to connect the two concepts in logical and creative ways.
Content-Goal Consistency - Learning Activities
First, I think the video and two articles you chose are excellent. They're right on topic, very interesting and thought-provoking. Two things though: 1. I think that it is too much reading for one unit. I would drop the Zhang article and instead summarize its main points and cite the article. 2. And more important, I felt like I was watching and reading without enough context. There needs to be more build-up to the articles so that I know what I am reading FOR. What information am I looking to take away? What questions am I hoping to find answers to? What creative connections am I supposed to be making?
I need to know more both about 21st century learners and about BYOD before I read those articles, so a paragraph or two about that would be good.
You also need to develop questions that are open and generative for learners to think about while they read. Maybe in order to compel the readers to actually read deeply and think about the questions, have them share their answers on a discussion board or in a blog.
This is my favorite resource on open, generative questions - http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-Questions.html
Instructional Sequencing
Like I said, I needed to know much more about BYOD before I could understand in any detail or depth why it was relevant to 21st century learners.
Engagement and Interaction
I think you should refer back to the open, generative questions issue for your discussion questions. Also, you might want to have a question where learners have to talk about specific scenarios or have them create specific lesson plans. It might be a good idea to provide some examples for them to use to relate the concepts to the real world, and to use as models for their work. Jianwei did mention that it's good to have an authentic problem or case analysis at the beginning, and then have the learners revisit it at the end.
Technical Quality
Your technical quality is pretty good, but you need to embed that PDF directly on the page. Here is how to do that - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Embed_Document
Jianwei said that short pages are best, so you should probably break the unit down into shorter pages once you're finished developing and polishing the content.
Extended Resources
The diagram of 21st Century Learners at the top is a great diagram but it's practically invisible (despite being big and colorful) because there's no caption or text around it telling me how to use it, what to look for in it, how it relates to what we're talking about, what it's about, etc.
There were no supplementary resources for the learner to pursue tangents or more advanced learning on their own. There should probably be some, and each of them should be introduced and contextualized.
To sum up, I think you have a good beginning, because the resources you've gathered are FANTASTIC and your goals are clear. However you really need to work on your sequencing and learning activities.
Re: Discussion Page for Peer Review -- Yvonne Koulikov (talk) 19:43, 24 April 2013 (EDT)
Thank you Sarah for your thorough analysis and suggestions. They are very helpful. I didn't cover BYOD in the first unit becasue that is covered in Unit 2. I felt it was important to first convey how students learn and then BYOD environments. I have the teachers creating lesson plans in later units and examples will be provided at that time. I didn't want to include this type of activity prior to the introduction and exploration of the Mobile App tools. I will work on the sequencing as you suggest. Thanks again for the feednack.
Instructor feedback on your draft unit -- Jianwei Zhang (talk) 21:58, 1 May 2013 (EDT)
Your draft units are well designed and presented. I like the flow of each unit, beginning with a highlight of key points, moving on to deeper reading, then discussion/reflection. A few improvements you may make:
1) Your course front page looks a bit too heavy in content, you may integrate some of the information into your actual units.
2) All objectives, replace "students will" "teachers will" with "the participant will"
3) Your discussion questions could be more focused. Currently you ask the participant to respond to many questions. Try to focus on one or two questions that are most essential for the topic of the unit.
Re: Instructor feedback on your draft unit -- Yvonne Koulikov (talk) 20:33, 5 May 2013 (EDT)
Thank you very much for the helpful information. I have made the improvements per your suggestions. Thanks again, Yvonne