[A] Assignment Week 1

(Please post a response by Sunday, 7/24)

Below is a list of just a few, common categories of educational resources that can be designed to be student-driven. 

An in-class activity (i.e students are tasked with generating a grading criteria for the class, or for a project)

A handout/A study guide: (i.e students create a hand out or study guide that they think would help other students learn an important topic in the class)  

A video: (students can take a pre-existing video that is either public domain or uses a CC license and edit or remix it with other CC/Public Domain footage)

An essay/article that synthesizes information from  copyrighted articles or textbooks for the benefit of other students. 

For more ideas and information about types of open assignments, take a look at this list of assignments (which is itself an OER!)

After considering these lists, answer the following questions:

1) What skills are most necessary for your students to absorb and apply the content/topics of your class?

2) Which of the above categories (or another of your choosing) do you think would best help them learn these skills?

3) As you saw in the example from the live session, it’s possible to take an existing educational resource and edit or remix it–is this something that interests you? If you were to search for a pre-existing OER to edit, what search terms might you use? 

8 thoughts on “[A] Assignment Week 1

  1. Nitza Milagros Escalera

    1) What skills are most necessary for your students to absorb and apply the content/topics of your class?
     To find encyclopedias and dictionaries on JJays’s library website
     To use these tools to understand the definitions of terms used in the field of criminal justice
     To learn that fields of study use terms/concepts in specific ways
     To learn the importance of not relying on definitions found on google when conducting work or readings in a particular field of study

    2) Which of the above categories (or another of your choosing) do you think would best help them learn these skills?
     Have students work in groups to generate a class glossary

    3) As you saw in the example from the live session, it’s possible to take an existing educational resource and edit or remix it–is this something that interests you? If you were to search for a pre-existing OER to edit, what search terms might you use?
     I would welcome reviewing a pre-existing OER to learn how to develop this project for the class. The term I would search is “glossary” and “definitions.”

    Reply
  2. Michael W Yarbrough

    In this workshop I’m hoping to revise a series of worksheets I have students do in my Law in Everyday Life course, then compile into a portfolio. Here’s an example of the first worksheet instructions from the spring semester: https://bit.ly/lws330culturalrepresentation.

    Overall these worksheets worked well, but I want to revise them because students found them a bit too complicated to understand at first. Right now they’re organized around abstract concepts from the course, which students didn’t always understand before starting the worksheet. I want to change them to instead focus on different spaces in everyday life where law appears, e.g. home, work, school, public spaces, etc. I think that might be more intuitive.

    I also thought OER could fit in by designing the assignments so students could share them with each other as well as with me. So for example, one worksheet might ask students to answer a few questions related to the way their topic plays out in their workplace or at school, etc. and when they submit them they’d be viewable by the whole class and we could compare and contrast them during class time.

    1) Do you think you would like students to create this resource from scratch, or would you like to provide them with a template of this resource and have them revise, remix or adapt it? Why?

    I think I would provide a template with certain questions/tasks, but students would generate their own content from scratch (mostly written answers, but perhaps also including audiovisual media they create themselves such as photos). I want to strike a balance between guiding students to look for and analyze different kinds of evidence, and leaving it open enough for students to draw from their own lives and what interests them most.

    2) What important topics within your discipline will this assignment (which involves creating or editing a resource) cover?

    Key topics include a) how categories and concepts are socially constructed in different spaces, b) how law contributes to those constructions, and c) how people use, respond to, and/or change social or legal definitions of those concepts.

    3) List any learning goals or skills that you would especially like students to engage with while making or editing this resource.

    I would like students a) to identify different ways that their category or concept is constructed in daily interaction and in law; b) to compare and contrast these constructions and trace how they interrelate; and c) use and critically analyze different types of evidence relating to these topics.

    Reply
    1. Bruce Shenitz (he/him/his)

      I liked the worksheet example you included, which seems very clear. It sounds like you’re project is already in progress. I’m not sure how many worksheets you’re thinking of revising/redoing, but it might be a good idea to start with a small number the first time you try these approaches.

      Reply
  3. Andrew Hernandez (he/him/el)

    After considering the list above…

    1) What skills are most necessary for your students to absorb and apply the content/topics of your class?

    Given the breadth of potential educational resources with the potential to be edited/remixed in a student-driven way, I think one of the most important skills for my students would be metacognition/critical self-reflection. They would need to be able to take a step back and consider the assignment not (only) as a student completing a task for a grade, but rather as an instructor/facilitator who not only responds to but also actively creates the parameters of the resources. Unfortunately, this is not something many of our students have been socialized to do. In my experience assigning student-driven work, the class often needs a lot of facilitation (at least at the beginning) and modeling to help them rethink how to approach a project in which they have more agency/decision-making power.

    2) Which of the above categories (or another of your choosing) do you think would best help them learn these skills?

    I think the in-class activity would best help students to develop their own critical thinking and creativity as they would not only be required to respond to an assignment, but to create the criteria by which they (and others) would be evaluated/deemed successful. Engaging in this kind of project, therefore, would force students to consider a given topic in a broad way, while also considering what kinds of models/exemplars they might need to provide so that they fellow students are most successful.

    3) As you saw in the example from the live session, it’s possible to take an existing educational resource and edit or remix it–is this something that interests you? If you were to search for a pre-existing OER to edit, what search terms might you use?

    In principle, yes, I would be interested in taking an existing education resource hand having students edit/remix it. As stated in the Week 1 Discussion, while I am interested in various creative kinds of assignments, for various reasons I am committed to facilitating my students through a long-term research project (ie, proposal, annotated bibliography, outline, essay). As such, and given I am focusing on my ANT 315: Systems of Law, Justice and Injustice Across Cultures course here, if I were to search for a pre-existing OAR to edit, I would probably search for a student-created research article or “textbook” pertaining to a current controversial law/court finding (i.e., stand your ground, reproductive rights, immigration, etc.). Depending upon the source OER, I would probably have my students more fully develop the analyses from an anthropological perspective.

    Reply
  4. Katalin Downing (She///Her)

    1) What skills are most necessary for your students to absorb and apply the content/topics of your class?
    In my view, the most important skillset in Political Science and for all of my courses is Critical Thinking, namely where students are presented with information in a neutral way and they themselves determine their viewpoint or perspective.

    2) Which of the above categories (or another of your choosing) do you think would best help them learn these skills?
    I’m not sure, I usually assign a briefing paper instead of a final and I find that format to be really liberating as well as useful for the purposes of consolidating information into a practical application.

    3) As you saw in the example from the live session, it’s possible to take an existing educational resource and edit or remix it–is this something that interests you? If you were to search for a pre-existing OER to edit, what search terms might you use?
    Yes, but I am unclear what “remix” means, in this context and would like to learn more.

    Reply
  5. Michael Lynch Salazar (He/Him)

    1) What skills are most necessary for your students to absorb and apply the content/topics of your class?

    To memorize key terms/concepts not only for the purpose of testing, but to carry on the basic knowledge of economics in order to apply it to their every day life. I always say, “I want you to be able to debate these articles and topics with your family around the dinner table or even with a stranger on the subway.”

    2) Which of the above categories (or another of your choosing) do you think would best help them learn these skills?

    Flash cards or reviewing notes from the textbook or lectures is important, but also documenting the participation from their peers in group discussions about weekly news articles regarding economics both domestically and internationally.

    3) As you saw in the example from the live session, it’s possible to take an existing educational resource and edit or remix it–is this something that interests you? If you were to search for a pre-existing OER to edit, what search terms might you use?

    I think the idea of students building their own study guide for the final exam or even a textbook for future classes to use is quite probable. If my students were to document their discussions on our weekly economic articles and combine it with the notes they take for their textbook homework assignments, they may be able to collectively create (with some guidence) a study guide to quiz each other a week or so before the exam and even an online textbook and/or guinde lecture series for future generations.

    Reply

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