James Falkofske Summer 2007

Assumption # 1 Students WANT to do Well  They want to be there.  They are happy to be there.  If they become disgruntled, then I have done something to them OR failed to provide something for them.

Simple Things  Students need to understand the required formats, parameters, and styles of deliverables  If students hit 3 or 4 roadblocks, the “give up the trip” (“why should I care; the instructor doesn’t”)  Most miscommunication is the fault of the instructor who does not provide enough details and examples

If YOU were a new hire…  What if you were a new hire and told “in 16 weeks we will either promote you or FIRE you… Good Luck and GO TO WORK!” – how confident would you feel?  Would you want detailed expectations, samples of former “work” of the department, and maybe some list of policies and procedures?

We Owe our Students…  Respect  Clarity  Samples and Examples  “Over explain” versus under explain

Clarifying Expectations  Rigor  Opportunities to Succeed for Everyone  Clear grading policies  Pushing to “exceed” expectations (get students in the habit of “going beyond” the project description)

Three Levels of Competency  Failing to meet the expectations (0 points)  Meeting the base expectations (50-70% of possible points)  Exceeding the expectations (100% of the possible points)

Standards and Requirements  Rubric contains the standards and requirements  Additional resources provided to help students submit in proper formats  Many criteria to allow students to demonstrate design skills as well as knowledge and understanding  Mechanics are important

Research Paper  Topic Choice  Audience Adaptation  Mechanics  Citations  Organization  Logic  Proper use of Course Concepts  Applicability

Research Citations  Rubric includes instructor expectations for proper citations of quoted materials as well as a webpage that helps build citations.  Students need to submit 7 credible and recent research sources with their topic – to prove that there are sources available  Turn-It-In is used to verify student authorship and correct quoting of cites

Electronic Concept Project Presentation  Creativity  Audience Persuasion  Mechanics  Citations  Organization  Logic  Proper Use of Course Concepts  Specificity

Discussions  Activity 1: post by mid-week reactions and thoughts about the questions and problems for the discussion  Activity 2: by end of week, post replies to classmates which support their thoughts and arguments, refute those points, or answer questions another classmate has asked  In both activities – students must incorporate research sources, to become practiced at finding information

Reflection Paper  Demonstrate changes in attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, practices, and understandings  Helps student identify their own competencies and significant learning moments  Helps identify areas of the course that were difficult - so that instructor can provide improvements in the future

Peer Review  2 weeks before assignment turned in to instructor, students exchange completed works in the discussions.  Peer to peer feedback (to improve overall quality of deliverables)  Peer to peer teaching (learning while reading and evaluating other projects)  1 week for review; 1 week to make improvements before deadline

3 Functions of Peer Review  Ensures students cannot procrastinate on major assignments (must be turned in 2 weeks early to group)  Provides opportunities to improve language, logic, and analysis within the assignment  Allows peer-to-peer learning

Rubrics as Defense  Poor work is easily identified by student  Student can “pre-grade” work before submitting it  Grading becomes cleaner and clearer (student scores in one of the three levels for each criteria – and therefore it is easy to identify where students earned/lost points

Syllabus Contains Purposes  The syllabus helps identify the purposes for each of the assignments, thereby supporting the criteria in the rubrics  Policies, and the reasons for those policies, are clearly described late assignments required formats extra credit

Samples for Rubrics  List.asp?topic=Rubrics List.asp?topic=Rubrics

Questions?  questions to  Additional content and advice is available on my website and at my blog