W200 Mid-term Evaluation Reflection

In week 9, I conducted my mid-term course evaluation. I am very excited to see all my students’ ratings about the course and the instructor as outstanding are either agree or strongly agree. My students have given me many good and useful suggestions. The following is the summary of the strength and areas of improvement for me as instructor, as well as the course curriculum.

Most meaningful activity/topic	Least meaningful activity/topic	My strength as the instructor	My areas of improvements
Teacher website (n= 5) and e-portfolio (n=2)	Digital story because I already know how to use movie maker (n=1), time-consuming (n=1 ) Too hard for elementary kids (n=1) Not sure about my subject area (n=1)	Explains things clearly (n= 2) Explain how to do projects in class (n=1) Communicating expectations clearly (n=1)	Long lectures (n= 2) Class time too long (n= 1) Too many examples provided (n= 1) More organized with time (n=3) and finish the class on time
Webquest (n= 3)	Case analysis (n=1)	Giving feedback quickly (n= 2) Giving feedback by using videos (n=1)	Too many assignments (n= 4)
Different websites (as resources) (n=2 )	Teacher website (n= 1)	Modeling of technology use in various kinds of activities (n=2)	More guidance on how to do the project (n= 1)
Use of Diigo (n=2)	The importance of technology (n=1) because I already know about it	Enthusiastic and interactive (n=1)	Too much group work (n= 1)
Case analysis because it is for a real teacher (n=1)	Kidspiration (concerns about it not available in future classrooms) (n= 1)	Using weekly announcements as guidance (n=2)
Digital story (n=1)

The evaluation is very informative. I pay special attention to the constructive ones as indicated by the red font. Here is a brief reflection on these feedbacks.

·      Students may feel digital story project challenging because of the topic. If they have not decided on their subject areas, they would struggle with topic 1 and 3. In addition to WeVideo, we should offer other options so that the project can be customized for students’ grade levels. For example, offering iPad movie production tasks can be one option.

·      When we introduce a tool that is not free, we need to make it clear to students how likely they would have access to the tool.

·      I need to treat my students more like adults. I will share with them my pedagogical beliefs and analyze why we have some of the problems. I created a prezi to address my students’ concerns. The prezi will be presented in week 10 at the beginning.

W200 Week 4 - 5

This semester, I am working with very closely with my mentee, Verily, on teaching. I feel I always learn something from her every week. In these two weeks, one thing I learned from her is to use sticky notes (note pad) of different colors to ask students for thing they like, how we (as W200 team) can improve, and one concern. It works out pretty great. The nice thing about this is the visual representation of how the students are feeling about the course. That is something I would like to try for next week. Thank you Verily for sharing :)

I am responsible for week 5, and I have reduced the number of PPT. That works better than previous semesters for me. One thing I did different this semester for the mini case scenario is to have students present the technology options they found and share that in front of the whole class. Then we went over each of them. We discuss why some options are not closely related to the needs of the teacher. That greatly helped my students to understand the relationship between step 1 and step 2.

One awesome tool from Canvas is the audio comment feature. I have used this feature to provide students with detailed feedback. It is a great example of enhancing (making impossible possible), and efficient (I usually leave a comment of about 1 minute). The feedback are very specific. From my students' improved class prep, I can see that it works pretty well. It would be better if there is a screencast option. I feel it would be more useful than the video comment feature, which I never used. We are commenting on students' assignments. It would be so much helpful if students can see what we are commenting on at the same time.

W200 Week 1 - 3 Reflection

This is week 3 of W200. This semester, labor day is in week 2. So our week 2 class is online. I used Adobe Connect to record the class. But since it is only week 2, my students are overwhelmed with all things they should remember. In week 3, I created a "W200 When, Where, and How" guidance handout for them to check where to find information. This is something shared by Verily Tan. I think it worked very well. So next semester, I am going to provide the guidance document from week 1.

Also if I have to move one class online, I will try to make it a quick Q&A synchronous session for the students to get ask questions. I should also have a better use of text as a guidance. For example, underneath the lecture video recording, I can add a list of resources they would need, and the deliverable from the activity. If possible, example projects should also be provided.

One thing that I am really proud of is that I have a better collaboration with my ULAs. We walked around the classroom while students were discussing NEST-T standards. We asked them questions, and helped them to come up with examples. As a result, we have great discussions.

For Fall 2013 semester, our awesome W200 team is using the self-evaluation tool to assess our strength and weaknesses. See image below. Based on the results, I choose the following two as the main goals.

My top one professional development objective is to build networks with others in the field, as well as benchmark and share best practices. This teacher blog would be my main communication channel to better network and share best practices with other teacher educators.

My second objective is to improve my assessment skills by better monitoring individual and group performance. I am working with two Undergraduate Lab Assistants (ULA) this semester. So I will use Google spreadsheet for each class to keep track of student's progress.