“The action is in the interaction.” – Douglas Conant

Planned Student-Student & Student-Instructor Interactions

Promoting community is one of the most important, foundational pieces to working with my group of learners. This community must share ideas, debate understandings, agree AND disagree on professional practices, and problem solve together. In the blended course, I will use many of the strategies from the Barkely & Major article, 6 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses, including:

• Creating a plan for communication
• Meeting in Real Time
• Creating opportunities for information and expertise sharing
• Using collaborative learning techniques
• Developing Sub-Communities

In addition, I will use strategies from The Art of Coaching Teams by Elena Aguilar, which is full of relational activities and healthy processes for effective communities of learners.

Learner interactions will most often have a collaborative learning focus with lots of group problem solving, learning and idea sharing. Some of the Collaborative Learning Techniques and Platforms I plan to use include:

• Jigsaw
• Think Aloud Pair Problem Solving
• Storytelling
• Project Based Learning (PLC)
• Brainstorming/Concept Mapping
• Case Studies/Comprehending for meaning (viewing, reading, listening)
• Field Trips/Service Learning
• Games
• Debate/Fishbowl/Group Discussions/Think-Pair-Share

 

Interaction Platforms will include, but are not limited to:

• Google Classroom
• Multimeter and Google Forms
• Kahoot
• Padlet
• Edsby
• Google Jamboard
• Google Docs
• Teams
• Screencastify

Rationale & Justification for Types of Interactions

There were many parts of the Bates text that resonated with me when planning for interactions and assessment with my group of learners. First, in Chapter 4.4, the Online Collaborative Learning Theory, where students work together to “create knowledge, to invent, to explore ways to innovate, and, by so doing, to seek the conceptual knowledge needed to solve problems rather than recite what they think is the right answer,” helped me to frame my intentions. This is what I want for my learners!

Chapter 6 of the Bates text helped me to frame my role, and the role of my learners. While I have selected the sequence and general content, I view my role as helping students to analyze, interpret or apply this content and the ideas of their colleagues to their own setting. While I am adopting a more constructivist approach, I do know that I will have to provide instruction and a vision towards more inclusive ideals in our building, and support learners as they struggle with these new concepts and ideas. One of the ways that I will provide space to co-construct guidelines is by having staff develop community of learner “Group Norms” through a shared Google Jamboard. These Group Norms will be referenced frequently to ensure that interactions are “supportive, engaging and relevant.”

Due to my view of the learner, my understanding of my role and my educational philosophy, the assessment of this course will not be typical to most courses. There will be limited assessment of the learner, and increased learner assessment of the learning environment we have created for collaboration. Feedback will be collected frequently to further refine the space for optimal learning. My assessment of learners may be used towards their professional growth appraisals, but mostly the information gathered by learner participation will be utilized to further inform the direction of learning improvement in our school. Much of the assessment will be learners deciding what they have learned, what they wish to continue learning and whether they are satisfied with what they have learned.

Regardless, we were asked to outline assessment, so here are my proposed methods:

Assessment

• Monthly Formative: Surveys, Games, Anecdotal Observation, Project Work, Peer Assessment/Feedback
• Yearly Summative: Professional Learning Community Reports, Teacher Professional Growth Plans, Learning Improvement Plan Goal Reporting
• Monthly Reflective: Ongoing feedback on learning environment and ongoing change to direction of course content, sequence, and method

If you are interested my detailed course outline, check out my video summary by clicking the following link:

Professional Learning Course Outline