instructional design essentials, week 2, part 1

For last week's homework, I was looking at smaller pieces of the Research Module. These smaller pieces feed into a final assignment that students complete over the 2+ weeks. The assessment I've created below will be the final assignment for the Research Module. The outcomes I identified in the previous post will be scaffolded in order for students to succeed in their final assignment.

These are the outcomes I'm using for the research module:

Students will demonstrate the disposition of a student-scholar by:

• Using an academic research process to create new information.
• Identifying suitable types of information sources for their specific purpose.
• Finding the information effectively and efficiently.
• Critically evaluating the information retrieved based on the context.
• Understanding the values of different communities and scholarly disciplines.

Forward looking assessment

I really like the idea of a "problem posing" education so that's what I've been using as I think about this.

Students will identify a problem in their community and use different kinds of suitable evidence to create a solution. Students will then present their work to the members of their community and a decision/policy maker, tailoring their presentation for each. The presentation to their community will be more visual (an infographic) and use language and evidence that is valued by their community. The presentation to the decision or policy maker will be a letter outlining how they identified the problem, the solution they've created, and how they know it will work. Again, students will need to use language and evidence valued by their audience.

Students can transfer this learning to many other situations. This may be in other courses, an internship or service learning experience, or in their job.

Criteria & standards

• Presentation to their Community - Infographic:
• language appropriate for their community (e.g. lay terms v. technical terms)
• visual depictions of the problem and solution
• evidence that is valued by that community (e.g. personal narratives, local expert testimony)
• Presentation to the Decision/Policy Maker - Letter:
• writing appropriate for this audience (more formal)
• detailed descriptions of the problem and solution
• evidence that is valued by this community (e.g. research, data)

Self-assessment

I like to use written reflections to help students determine their growth in any area. I have mainly used pre- and post- reflections to ask students where they started and what they learned. These are a few questions I've used (taken from AVID):

• KWLA (can also be used to frame the research process):
• What do I know?
• What do I want to know?
• What did I learn?
• How will I apply it?

Feedback

As the assignment above is more of an end-of-the-module assignment, so students won't receive "frequent" feedback. However, as students complete the scaffolded assignments during their module, I will follow the FIDeLity model for feedback.

We use Moodle on my campus and all of the content and assignments for the course are housed there. This makes for an easy way to offer frequent and immediate feedback. However, in order to provide better feedback, I need a more fully developed set of criteria to make it more meaningful. Empathy is also very important to me, because I want the students to feel safe in my class and willing to express themselves both in the classroom and the Moodle course.