On 8/21/20, my mentor, Joann Pell, observed my online course and reviewed my lessons, honor's project, and syllabus. Being new to honors, I wanted to verify that I was teaching at an appropriate level of difficulty and that I was fulfilling all of the program's requirements.
Joann provided feedback on the level of difficulty and helped me identify areas that needed to be clarified. I incorporated Packback to encourage my honors students to think critically in the online environment. Packback recommends requiring a minimum curiosity score of 40 for beginners. After discussing this with Joann, I decided to require a minimum of score of 60 from my honors students. When reflecting on Fall semester and seeking Joann's feedback, Joann suggested that I increase the minimum curiosity score to 70 for my honors students. After reviewing the scores from Fall semester, I believe this is a great idea because it will challenge my students to provide additional reasoning and justification in their posts. My students have the opportunity to edit their post if they do not earn a high enough score, so this increased expectation will encourage them to improve their work if they score low. I am looking forward to seeing the quality posts my students submit to meet the enhanced expectation.
After observing my class and discussing my concerns about recreating class presentations in the online format, Joann recommend that I offer my students options. I really liked this idea because students who are artistic and/or tech savvy would have the opportunity to showcase their skills while students who prefer to submit the information in writing would have the opportunity to do so. I created an assignment in which students could present the required components in the format of their choice ( paragraph form with visuals, poster, video, newsletter, online poster using Jamboard, brochure using Canva, infographic using Piktochart, or visual using Padlet). I have been impressed with both the quality of work and the variety of presentations my students have submitted. Having Joann as my mentor has been extremely helpful.