Module 7 MVMs

My reading on Monday began with Chapters 7 & 8 in Making the Move to eLearning: Putting Your Course Online. The two passages that follow hold particular importance to me in light of the week that just passed.

"When planning for a cooperative project in the course design phase, the most important thing is to determine a product that will not only showcase the important knowledge and skills but is also a task that would be difficult, if not impossible, to complete alone. This compels the group to work together to accomplish the task." (p. 81)

 "The project needs to be meaty enough that all group members will need to be involved if the group is to complete it within the required time frame." (p. 103)

The cooperative project that was assigned was an exercise in patience because it was too simple to be a group project. The coordination detracted from the product rather than adding to it. As it was, I did about 1/3 of what I normally would have done and it took about three times longer. What I will take away from this exercise is to review all of my group projects to make sure they are truly suitable from the number of students assigned.

I have rediscovered something I already knew about myself--I love to chase tangents to see how they may be relevant to the topic. In our classes at UW-Stout I often extend discussions; however, I don't  redirect the discussion back to the original topic. However, in studying my interactions with my students, I find that I extend and redirect as necessary. Only one of my classes is discussion based. All my other classes use the discussion board to surface issues, answer questions, and provide a forum for team work. In database classes there are correct answers. The answers are situational, but there are rules that govern the creation of databases that are founded in math. We can discuss and argue theory, yet math does create answers.

Most of my classes are entry level in which students are given the initial groundwork to develop critical thinking and the objectives must to approved by the Curriculum Committee. Each instructor teaching the class must teach to the same set of objectives. I will need to rewrite my lesson objectives to incorporate the EASy method while adhering to the class objectives stipulated by the program.

Resource:

Lehmann, K., & Chamberlin, L. (2009). Making the Move to eLearning: Putting Your Course Online. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Education.