EDU 643

Thought Map

Click here to view thought map designed to consider the learner experience of my week 1 lesson outline.

Learning More About My Learners

To learn more about my learners, there are a number of things I can do to prepare myself and make sure my activities are designed for their success. These include:

• Trying to better understand their demographics;

• Trying to better understand their experience with technology;

• Finding out what technology students have access to for my course;

• Learning about special needs/disabilities of my students, if any;

• Getting a better understanding of how academically inclined my students are;

• Learn more about students prior knowledge through the development of a diagnostic assessment for students;

• Thinking about if they are taking my film class because they think it’s a “bird course”;

• Thinking about if there are any major “Students of Concern” in my class; and

• Emailing home to introduce myself to parents and offer the ability to parents to share any concerns they may have

A Tech Experience and Access Survey

A common practice of mine is to create a tech survey for students to fill out at the beginning of the year. This survey has general questions that help me understand the tech they have access to, as well as their experience level in tech.

This survey would be done with a simple Google Form shared through Google Classroom. This type of survey can quickly and easily collect data for me to see the overall tech competency of the class, and allows me to peer into specific submissions to see who may have more difficulty than others.

Diagnostic Testing

A simple diagnostic test is powerful tool to give you insights about where students are in terms of understanding of your upcoming topics. Providing students for a way to share the previous knowledge can create an important opportunity for you to customise the lesson so you are meeting the needs of the student, and you are not developing content that is too easy or too difficult for students. Following these up with frequent formative assessments can further assist you in your process of gauging your students understanding of the concepts you are covering.

An Interests Survey

Another survey I start my students off with at the beginning of the year is an interests survey. This survey allows you to learn more about what your students want to learn, what may bore them, and gives you the opportunity to customise your course (where applicable). Again, I would complete this survey with a Google Form, and finishing this survey at the beginning of the year gives me guidance to make sure I am preparing materials for students that are relevant to their interests and inline with their expectations with the course.

Self- Introduction Video

At the beginning of the year, I always have students create a self-introduction video where they share the reason why they’re taking this course, as well as at least 2 details about themself. Additionally, in this video students need to introduce 2 friends in the class, one friend that they already know, and one friend they just met (or 2 new friends if they know noone.).

This assists me in numerous ways. Firstly, it helps me learn their names and gets a better understanding of who they are as a student, their personal interests, and why they’re taking my course. This is also an informal tech-competency test to see if they are capable of making a simple video and sharing it with me through Google Classroom. And finally, this video is the first step for community building in my class, as students are forced to speak and engage with others in the class. This encourages building social connections, which they will need to be successful throughout the year, especially since a large part of filmmaking is working with others in a multitude of ways.

Students of Concern Lists

At my school there is an actively updated private internal list of Students of Concern that holds data about specific students that may be challenging, and why. Comparing the list of students in my class to this list to see if there are any students I should be aware of. Not only for behavioural concerns, but also special needs and/or disabilities.

Informal Discussions w/Colleagues

These discussions can allow me to better understand the students in my class, and would give me an opportunity to learn more about their demographics, as well as special needs that students may have, which may not be properly or officially documented in the Students of Concern list.

Emailing Home To Say Hello

This is not only an opportunity for parents to share details about their child, but an opportunity to see how active students’ parents are engaging in their learning. I have found that this type of engagement by parents - whether or not they are replying to emails - has often been an indicator of the level of support that students may have at home with their studies. Not only can I learn more about the student this way if parents offer any details, but I can learn more about their home environment from this interaction, or lack thereof.

Reflection

The process I took for this part of this project was to think about the various factors that would affect a student's success in my class. Since there are so many factors that affect student success, (such as home life, tech competency, access to tech, special needs, experience with tech, etc.) trying to collect data, whether formal or informal, can help support my goals for each lesson and help me better understand where a student is coming from, and how they are approaching a problem/project in my class. With the methods I listed above, I felt these processes would adequately help me understand my students' needs, without being too much of a burden on myself, or my students.

Additionally, I feel each form of data collection I use helps me collect information on students in a holistic method, that gives me a larger picture of the student’s background and needs to be successful in my classes, while providing a good amount of data that would be relevant to the goal of understanding more about my students.

This activity was a good reminder of this important step of the lesson design process, and I enjoyed the process of thinking more about my learners to help improve my practice as a teacher and improve my understanding of the lesson design process. At first, I struggled to view this activity through the eyes of the student, however, I feel after some additional thought, I was able to successfully achieve this.

From experience, obtaining this data and information on your learners is done most easily at the beginning of the year, (for example, with the "tech experience" or the "student interests" surveys that I mentioned), that can help guide you in your practice for the remainder of the year. Not only can learning more about your students support and guide you in your practice, but help you understand their motivations for their decisions, and help prepare you to meet the needs of each student and the adversities they may face throughout the year. However, it is important to always remember to refer back to that data throughout the year, as the data is useless if not used. Thinking in advance of my students while developing my lesson content has been a process that I have actively tried to engage in, but it is also something that can easily be forgotten about when creating lessons in a hurry.

This was a good reminder of how this step in the lesson design process will help guide you in your practice, but more importantly, if you use this data wisely, you may improve student engagement in activities and increase overall success of each student in your class, which is the primary reason why this is important. It is well known that it's not always about WHAT you teach, but rather, HOW you teach it. And if you are taking your learners into account, and developing your lesson content with the audience in mind, this will ensure the highest level of success for each lesson.