Objectives:
Explore and unpack 21st-century skills and habits of mind to model and foster with today's learners
Assess the impact of real world design on student learning and motivation
Final Presentation
My final course presentation was a synthesis of all that we did and learned as a result of using the design process and real world learning techniques in our classroom. In particular, I gather direct feedback from students and collected video samples of their learning to better understand what was working and what I needed to change to provide a productive learning experience. Visit this YouTube link or scrub to 1:33:32 in the video below to specifically see me. The presentations were given to a full audience in late November.
Reflection
This presentation was driven directly by the quantitative and qualitative data I collected from students. In general, I really value this kind of data as a teacher, but this school year, I found myself avoiding it until deadlines of this course (Real World Learning Design) pushed me to do so. My subconscious fear in avoiding data was knowing about a number of issues first-hand and lacking both the skills and the time bandwidth to fix them all. If I thought I knew a lot of the problems and couldn't fix them, why would I want to ask students to share more? Though that approach may have some benefits, it left me without the opinions and concerns of many of my quieter students.
A full census of data from the class generated further reflection on the appropriate level of challenge with what I gave my students to accomplish. I recently shifted the work of one student over the limit on reasonable challenge to a new self-directed project that he quickly engaged in. I worked with two others to clarify their work and better connect with their team mentor until they felt like they had purposeful direction. On the unchallenged end, I will continue to work with one student who is not interested in further engaging in technical aspects of the course. Given the opportunity to quickly react and create positive changes for most students out of the target challenge zone, I will be sure to increase the frequency of this survey question to all students and take follow-up action.
As I move forward with the remainder of the school year and future iterations of the course, I am also looking forward to zeroing in on a smaller number of technical areas in which students can focus their energy. This will allow me to build quicker pathways to ramp students up in basic skills and create checks for understanding to ensure that all students are actually mastering the skills that matter. I will do the same for non-technical skills so that, instead of trying to dabble in everything, I can support students in successfully mastering an important handful of things.