D/B11: Chapter 27

Reflect on what you perceive to be your own areas of strength and what competencies you feel you need to work hardest to develop given your professional goals.  State and describe at least three competencies you’d like to develop and why.


Based on the competencies listed on page 275, table 27.3 for the instructor, I believe that a few of my strengths would be my ability to:

• Demonstrate effective presentation skills.  I try to be conscious about my volume and pace, as well as my proximity to students who need help with focus.

• Demonstrate effective facilitation skills.  Aside from presenting/demonstrating information to students, a lot of my time "teaching" is spent facilitating their individual work on drawing assignments and projects.  It takes hard work do keep track of each student's progress, and you must constantly be switching gears from one student to the next, but I think I manage this aspect well.

• Demonstrate effective questioning skills.  This can be applied both during presentations and facilitations.  During presentation, effective questioning techniques will help to keep the students engaged.  During facilitation, I often have students ask questions that were covered during the presentation, or are covered in the text.  Rather than "spoon feed" the information to them, I ask them to review their notes and/or text.  If they are asking an application-type question that does not have an obvious answer, I try to guide them with questions to the answer.

• Evaluate instructional effectiveness.  One thing that my principal has always pointed out to me during the follow-up portion of my teacher evaluations is that I am a very reflective practitioner.  I rarely just do something and move on.  I tend to analyze how students appeared to receive the instruction, and how I might use that information to improve the next class.

A few competencies that I would like to develop include:

• Plan instructional methods and materials.  It always seems that there is not enough plan time.  I find that with the additional obligations of the teaching profession, I often resort to the way it has always been done, because it is effective (enough) and is easier than trying to implement a new method.

• Stimulate and sustain learner motivation and engagement.  I find it very discouraging during a class period, to observe the students' activity and find that they appear to be bored or uninterested in the task or assignment.  In order to address this issue, I need to work harder to identify a variety of ways to engage students based on their individual learning preferences.

• Promote retention of knowledge and skills.  This is one thing that I put some effort into this past school year, but could use additional attention.  In my first few years of teaching, I assumed too much of my students as we moved from one unit to the next.  Over time, I have learned that review and summary activities are so important for knowledge retention.  Understanding this, I am not working to improve and be consistent with these methods.

• Use media and technology to enhance learning and performance.  Thanks in large part to this class, I have come to realize that there is a lot more that I can be doing with technology in my classes.  Up until now, I was feeling pretty good about how much technology is used with my CAD students, but that has been the extent of it - CAD.  There are so many resources that are available electronically for education, which would take my classes to another level, incorporating reading, writing, communication, and additional technical skills.

Screencast & Website

Screencast


This may be my favorite tool that we have looked at so far.  For my particular subject area, screencasts can be extremely valuable.  Again, I teach CAD classes, so it would be helpful to prepare my demonstrations for students in a screencast.  I could then make these available for students to access via the web, so that if they missed a class, or simply need to view it again, I can direct them to the screencast.  Perhaps at some point, I can have students create screencasts of tips and tricks that they discover and want to share with the rest of the class.  This might also tie in nicely with the idea I had of incorporating podcasts.  There are many podcast tutorials for CAD software, and if each student were to view a podcast as an assignment, a follow up to that assignment could be to master that skill, and document it via screencast.


Website


The website that I created is a resource for my students, and I would continuously add content to the website.  So far, I have created a page for each class that I will be teaching next year, and some links to important websites.  Over time, I could add embedded screencasts, prezis, my class calendar, worksheets, etc...


To play off of Dr. Peterson's idea of a webquest, I could transfer my "Engineering Internet Scavenger Hunt" and my "Architecture Internet Scavenger Hunt" to my website, adding a new page for each with links and instructions for all of the websites that I want them to visit as they gather information about Engineering and Architecture careers.  In the past, I have done this activity with students, but all of the information is printed on paper for them.  This way, it would all be available electronically.


Here is the link to my Google Site!

D/B10: Chapter 22

Before answering the following questions, I wanted to mention that I really enjoyed the "written symposium" structure of this chapter.


Identify 2 or 3 significant themes or differences you have noticed across these contexts and describe them.   


Adaptability
In light of consistently progressive technology, it is safe to assume that the most effective instructional designers will be those who are willing to continuously adjust to new positions, developing and demonstrating competency in the latest technological advances.


Applicability
Instructional designers must develop systems which can be easily applied to various subjects.  Without appropriate examples or methods of application to the subject matter, their work may be viewed simply as irrelevant.


Teamwork
As evidenced by figure 22.1 on page 225, the instructional designer is one of many contributors on a team that work together to achieve a final goal.  This is true in all three areas that have been discussed.  In any context, at minimum, an instructional designer requires input from subject matter experts, and often also requires input from other various contributors.


Is there a particular area or way that you believe your current professional working environment could learn from the other contexts described in these chapters?


In chapter 22, one writer discussed her work with faculty development.  Upon describing some of her responsibilities, she mentioned that one thing she likes to do is to gather input from faculty members about topics that they would like to receive training on.  Based on that input, she schedules the training sessions for the year.  I found myself thinking how nice it would be if we had a person to conduct such a survey for our staff professional development, then establish and execute PD sessions that were meaningful and engaging for its participants.


Another concept that has really stuck with me from the beginning of this class has been computer imagination.  In my professional working environment, there seems to be a big push to incorporate more and more technology into our classroom.  While the intentions are good, it seems that many teachers are simply making their materials and resources available electronically, without much consideration for how technology could be used to breathe new life into that material.  My hope is that our staff will find ways to incorporate technology into instruction in ways that change student learning for the better.