Summary+of+March+2nd+class

This class covered instructional strategies, the heart and soul of ET702. Kim led the class with an "Instructional Strategies Gazette"

She did a great job of covering small chunks of content and asking students to elaborate by sharing stories of how they either used or experienced that strategy. Her strategies modeled instructional strategies throughout the lesson.

Kim started her session by handing out construction papers and markers (color!) and asking students to think of three words that came to mind immediately when hearing the terms //instructional strategies.// Each student wrote three words. I worked with Tekleab ... his three words were //put// ... //instruction// ... //learning//. Mine were //mind// ... //catalyst// ... //understanding//.

Kim then had us work as a team to combine our words to describe instructional strategies. We came up with "present instruction for learning" and "creating catalysts for the mind for understanding". Everyone in the class did this ... we ended with four to six interpretations of instructional strategies ... all were very good.

The strategy was very constructivist because she had us generate our definitions. She did a wonderful job of scaffolding because she prompted us to come up with three words related to our perceptions of what instructional strategies meant. Nobody could back out of that, everyone had three words. These three words served to scaffold the constructivist part of the lesson. Brilliant.

This class was a little bit of magic, because before Kim shared her strategy, Miriam had shared one that was incredibly similar. Miriam described how she had students learning a foreign language write a paragraph. She did the same type of constructivist strategy, having students break into groups (collaborative learning - constructivist), shared a list of verbs to use by writing those verbs on a chalkboard (the verbs here served as scaffolding). Students then wrote their paragraphs as a team. They then critiqued each others work. What I take away from both of these examples (Kim's and Miriam's) is the importance of scaffolding, which both did. I am always criticized for not scaffolding enough. Or maybe for creating scary looking scaffolds.

I love attending my own classes.

Before I forget ... here's a Gagne 9-events image.

I'm thinking Miriam didn't consciously think to herself ... "I will be constructivist today and will scaffold the assignment by listing words on the chalkboard..." -- she just did it. The innate teacher in her generated this strategy on the fly. She could sense that students were reticent and just thought up the strategy on the spot.

Sometimes I wonder ... do instructional design models really teach people anything? Don't good teachers, natural teachers just do this on their own without their fancy words and theories? Maybe this is the catch ... Good teachers, gifted teachers just do this. Other mere mortals who want to be good teachers probably need the examples. We know the examples provided are good because theory helps us understand why those examples are working.

I'm writing backwards here, interesting. I started this reflection with what we covered at the end of the class. I think I'm doing that because either my memory is the freshest for the experiences that were latest, or, because I was most impressed by the things that happened at the end of the class. The start of the class -- going over the case study design - was good too.

I wish I had the case studies that people had to link to (we need it to write an article about writing case studies!!!!). I am hoping that students will go find versions of the case study to share. I am thinking I should always leave 100 points for every class I teach for "un-anticipated participation" -- if I had those 100 points I could say to everyone... "If you want your participation points you need to upload your case study work to our Wiki and share what happened with it during our sessions." I'm the teacher, I suppose I could do that. I don't think it is fair though to suddenly change the point system for the class. Hmmmm, I wonder though ... could I? If we had the messy trail of our case study work would that help students to see the decision making process and the design process together? This goes back to my "never lie" hang up. I create all kinds of problems for myself by these rules I impose on myself. There is strong voice in me that says ... it would not be fair to the students.

I will try this next time I teach the class.

Well, in spirit of the backwards approach to reflection ... the very start of the class was a review of Suzan's model of instructional design. Wow, it was cool. I could have looked at it for an hour and have gotten so many ideas about what she was thinking and how I could look at my model differently. Suzan, if you read this could you link to your revised model? I can help you if needed. We need to be posting our revised models anyway.