AY 375 Fall 2013: Twelfth Day Plan

Today we'll begin our broader pedagogical discussions and your Design-A-Section projects.

1. blah
2. blah

Open the floor up for general questions and sharing about how sections are going. Some questions include:

• What did you do?
• How did you implement your activities?
• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What would you do differently?
• How did you assess learning?
• Did you receive any unexpected questions/reactions/etc.?
• Did anything unexpected happen?
• What were you thinking about while you were running section? Any moments of panic?

A reminder on what Design-A-Section entails:

This project is meant to be a culmination of everything that we have learned together in Ay375. It is a means for you to develop a mini-lecture, activity, and method of assessment that targets a particular topic and your learning objectives. Your project will include the following:

1. a
2. b
3. c

At the beginning of December, you'll be given a ~15 minute presentation that showcases your work.

For homework, we asked you to consider some topics that you might want to develop a section around. Today, we want to spend a little time coming up with milestones you'll work towards every week until it is time for presentations.

When designing your section, your goal will be to create an “Integrated Section Design”, to borrow a phrase from L. Dee Fink (links are provided on the supplemental page). The steps in designing an integrated section require you to (1) identify the situational factors, (2) formulate the learning goals, (3) design the feedback and assessment procedures, and (4) select the teaching/learning activities. These four components are all inter-related, and we'll consider each in turn.

Situational Factors - Outside factors that can influence your section. This could be as simple as “How many students typically attend section,” but can also include, for example, “What prior knowledge do my students have on the subject?” or “How does the professor of the course view this idea in terms of his/her overall course goals?” Students and professor expectations fall into the situational factors: “What are the students or the professor expecting from section?”

Learning Goals -

Feedback & Assessment Procedures -

Teaching/Learning Activities -

Milestone 1

We want to create a “significant learning experience,” and this capstone project will get us doing just that. For the first milestone, you'll tackle five important questions. At the end of this step, you will have a draft for your Design-A-Section.

1. Step 1: Give careful consideration to the situational factors present
   • What is expected from the students? From the professor? How many students?
   • How does your topic (and, once you have one, the specific activities) fit into the course goals?
   • Are there special challenges for this particular course?
2. Step 2: What do you want students to learn? What are your learning goals?
   • Think expansively, beyond “understand” or “remember”.
   • Suggestion: Use Bloom (Lecture X). Remember, be specific.
3. Step 3: What will the students have to do, to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning goals?
   • What can do you that will help students learn as well as give you a basis for assessing understanding?
   • Go beyond what Duncan (Lecture X) would frown upon (“Does everyone understand?”)
4. Step 4: What has to happen during section for students to do well on the feedback and assessment you have designed?
   • Think creatively for ways of involving students that will support your learning goals.
   • Suggestion: Consider active learning techniques to create richer learning environments (Lectures X and X).
5. Step 5: Determine whether all these components are integrated.
   • The material you come up with in Steps 1-4 should be consistent with and support each other.

- Screening of “A Private Universe”

- Discussion questions:

1. What were the main points of the video? Did they surprise you or have you had similar experiences in section?
   1. Students come with their own ideas and preconceptions of scientific material. They hold on to those preconceptions unless they are clearly addressed in class and shown to be incorrect (and even then some of their preconceptions remain). Hands-on activities can be helpful. Diagrams can be so easily misleading.
2. How does Hammer reframe the problem of misconceptions?
3. What is a conceptual resource? What is an epistemological resource?
4. What are some techniques that Hammer suggests to help students productively use resources (either conceptual or epistemological)?
5. Closer is stronger. Is that wrong? Is it bad if someone holds this belief, since it leads them astray when considering the seasons? How might Hammer's arguments reconcile this conundrum?
6. If you, like the teacher in the video, became aware of these misconceptions your students have, how would you address them?
   1. Make it an opportunity to engage your students in the scientific process, advancing a hypothesis and trying to prove/disprove it, showing how they can determine which resources are applicable to this situation and which are not.
7. How do we incorporate these exercises of metacognitive learning into a course that is already saturated with conceptual material?

1. Complete first part of Design-A-Section
2. Read “The Hidden Curriculum” by Reddish.
3. Final round to taping - ask if this week is ok (no midterm review).