Open Letter:
My original assignment was what I call a “Reading Response”. A Reading Response is pretty vanilla basics. It is simply a homework assignment which asks a series of questions based on the assigned reading. The questions are either fact-based or based on judgments and inferences that need to be supported with reasoning and evidence. Typically these HW’s are treated as a kind of background assignment which help guarantee students read and read carefully, as well as to prepare them for class discussion of a text. Normally Reading Responses are simple two-step assignments, read and complete the questions. They do not involve any specific group activities outside of or in class except as they provide a foundation and background to lecture and class discussion.
The new assignment retains its base of reading the assigned text and answering questions. However, the new version is an interactive multi-level layered or scaffolded assignment where students provide feedback to each other at various stages in various modes within assigned groups. First they provide reactions to the text by making a simple short video for their group with their initial response to the text built around their own spontaneous reactions and broad questions which focus on their own judgements and opinions of it. Then they are to answer questions formally in writing and respond to each other’s work in terms of both writing quality and substance. These stages culminate in a group presentation where each student of the group is given a different question or different part of an answer to present to the class.
The main elements which changed are the use of multiple platforms and educational modes, the expansion of the assignment into a series of scaffolded procedures and steps, as well as the development of interactive steps where students respond to each other, including making them responsible for presenting the content of their work to the rest of the class (i.e. students who have not completed the assignment on their own group’s particular reading).
What’s left to do? While I have a schema here for a substantially revised assignment, I still have to go over the nuts and bolts of each step and brainstorm how they might best work, be effective and engaging. While the over-all structure of the assignment has found a definitive form, I need to think more carefully about the mechanics of each step and some of the wrinkles to illicit the interest and imagination of the students.
This seminar has provided a number of tools for me to integrate into my teaching repertoire such as a focus on scaffolding or developing a kind of multi-step multi-dimensional process for an assignment. It has introduced me to platforms like Vocat, that I would not have otherwise considered because it provides a convenient and practical format for students to communicate via video. I tend to avoid a variety of multi-media functions Blackboard offers precisely because of its limitations in terms of user-friendliness. These limitations turn into practical teaching limitations which can result in a less than engaged or satisfying experience for students. Meanwhile, Baruch Blogs and Vocat offer platforms that, because they are more user-friendly, are more practical to integrate into lesson plans and assignments. More generally the seminar has provided me time to “spitball” not so much about content issues which tend to be the focus of my class prep, but on matters of delivery of content and the structure of class/class assignments.
In terms of questions, I would really be interested to get more concrete information on scaffolding in terms of both a better understanding of what it is and its purpose as well as specific examples of how a basic assignment might be broken up into different types of scaffolded activities which might apply to any kind of educational content.