Documentation talk:Course Design Intensive/Facilitators Guidebook/Case Studies

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Overall, I thought a debate was an effective way for the students to reflect and apply the learning from the required background reading. By splitting the class into the two sides, it motivates students to think through alternative viewpoints that they may not have thought about before. The technique also required full participation and a collaborative approach for each team to deliver their arguments.

I think this learning activity could have been more learner centred by getting the students to prepare the summaries vs. the instructor. The opposite sides could have written up the alternative arguments and then the whole class could have brainstormed about missing arguments for both sides.

The debate seems like a good way to create a scenario where students are learning from each other, and in which the information to be gleaned from the assigned readings is not presented directly to the students. Instead, they need to think it through and apply the central questions to the reading.

One thing that could be changed about the debate assignment, is presenting the idea of debates as a valuable approach before the assignment itself. That way, explicit skill instruction is built into the assignment, and students go into it already having a sense of what the value of this activity is. This would also make the reflection afterwards more valuable.

Using the format of a debate is clearly a nice fit with the topic which could be controversial. I wonder if there could be a way to instruct debating skills in a more purposeful or sophisticated way, beyond the exercise of taking each other's point of view. In other words, it seems this format could be very useful to deepen students understanding of the content the debate was about but maybe something could be added in terms of communication skills?

I think debates are an effective way to encourage collaboration among students. The students in this case study were involved in hard, messy way of learning by brainstorming their own ideas about racial profiling and taking different positions for the arguments. The students did have an opportunity to reflect on their learning by looking into the summaries prepared by the instructor whose role was more like a facilitator.

Debates are a great way to get to the core of how to develop and support a position. Students often already have a sense of what is expected as the form/style is common in popular media and elsewhere. In my experience using debates, there are some barriers to learning that tend to arise though, such as language issues, public performance anxiety, and quick pace. With these challenges, students who know the material well may not be able to fully demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

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This course explicitly engages the student in the process of defining their learning outcomes, by involving them in designing the performance rubric. The students are involved in the process of learning, and reflect on the means and quality of their learning by means of peer review, group project building, and by having a course blog. Working together to build a project and being able to see and discuss the projects proposed by their peers helped them be more engaged in their learning, and also encouraged collaboration.

This course appears to have aspects of the five characteristics of learner-centered teaching put forward by Welmer (2012):

1. How does it engage students in the hard, messy work of learning? [Students help create the rubrics]
2. In what ways is explicit skill instruction included? ["Suggestions for finding and using Creative Commons images"]
3. What opportunities do students have to reflect on what they are learning and how they are learning it? [Peer review and assessment require some reflection on learning]
4. How does it tap into student motivation by giving them some control over the learning processes? [Students know that they will be applying the grading rubric they helped create, so (hopefully) they have a better grounding in the objectives behind the rubric]
5. How does it encourage collaboration? [Students appear to work in groups and give feedback to other groups]

Having students contribute to the development of the rubric is an interesting way of introducing an assignment. I wonder if the instructor notices a difference in the way students approach the assignment after having this discussion or if there are differences in the way the engage with feedback.

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I found this case study description crushing. Learners have little autonomy in their educational experience. They are told who they will work with, the projects they will choose from, how they will be graded, etc. I have a few ideas for re-orienting the learning environment in this course. The first would be to rethink and clearly address who is being graded, how and why for iPeer part of the assignment: "I include links on my syllabus on how to complete the iPeer evaluation. The responses from this peer evaluation are integrated into their participation marks. " Is the instructor grading learners in their ability to provide peer feedback? Is the peer feedback going directly to the student whom it is about? Is there a way to speak back to or address this feedback?

1.How does it engage students in the hard, messy work of learning? Using group project 2.In what ways is explicit skill instruction included? The instructor "encourage" the students to locate current problems. 3. Learner-centered teaching encourages students to reflect on what they are learning and how they are learning it. Start the group project after the first month of course so that the students should have the basic requirement to continue that work. 4.Learner-centered teaching motivates students by giving them some control over learning processes. The instructor lets the students to choose the best three topics after first month of the class. 5. Learner-centered teaching encourages collaboration. Students can learn from each other during the group work.

What would you change/adapt to make it more learner-centered, and why? What is the deliverable for the students? I agree with (LNathan) that is the instructor grading the peer feedback? I think more information regarding the overall project structure and marking rubrics is needed so that the students know what the requirements are. Peer evaluation is included in the participation marks and why not the project mark? Also how much will it be? I will change the peer evaluation to be part of the individual final project mark so that the students understand the important of working together.

I think this case might be the least learner-centered and also the most tiring for the instructor as he himself acknowledges it from the very beginning. One first and obvious thing that comes to mind is to let students propose the topic the will work themselves rather than handing them out a pre-made list. The way in which the instructor organizes the groups is not clear but also sounds very burdensome. I wonder which other better ways to organize students to work in group exist. And thank you Vincent for including the questions in your answer, that was very helpful! ;-)

I think this is a classic example where some students get a free ride working in a group. In this case study, there is no evidence of students being involved in the hard, messy work of learning. I would use the following strategies to to make it more learner-centered: Given the heavy course load it is important to have students work in groups outside the class, it is also important to have students engaged in collaborative activities within class to foster collaboration. The students should also be given some autonomy to be able to choose the topic within a specified area. This would take some of the burden off the instructor.

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It seemed like there was a lot of hand-holding by the instructor for the coding part of this class. Instead of having office-hours teaching each individual student how to import and manipulate data in Python, it could have been designed as a student group-based activity where students work together to be able to transpose their learning from the in-class wind data example to their own dataset. This will not only encourage more collaboration and move the skill-learning explicitly to the student (not the instructor), but also provide students with a way to gauge their own learning and modify their style based on their peers.