A Non-directional Approach....

This week I have been looking at my fellow cohort’s blogs. I mean I have really been looking at what they have written the past few weeks. As the 650 class has slowly chewed up and spit out endless counts of theory, the class has taken a large step forward into adult learning. This week was not absorbed with theory overkill, it was plain and simple.

As my fellow classmates shared their previous academic student/teacher experiences with the rest of the class, I thought about this whole “blog” exercise a little bit more. Can you have critical thinking and assessment in a “non-directional” journal style? What does non-directional mean? If it’s mass confusion and incoherent thoughts, then I am on the right track. I have a hard associating assessment and critical thinking with a “non-directional exercise.”

Rex asked a great question in his week six blog. “Is it a blog if no one reads it?” That question has a lot of legitimacy to it. If you wanted to answer that by saying a book is a book because it’s published and therefore it does not have to be read. Getting published on the internet is not quite the same as getting published via press. In fact, it’s night and day.

On to the seminar reflection:
This week was probably the most enjoyable because it wasn’t so theory based. It’s difficult to read a few summarized versions of some of the greatest academic researchers of all time and then translate years of their work into a few pages. This week was pretty cut and dry, adult learning! Jessie really posed some interesting questions in the discussion boards. She used two popular forms of assessment, observation and reflection. She asked the cohort to reflect back on our days as a student and reflect upon our experiences in classroom participation methods.

Jessie used the term “reeseen” this week. Other than the grammar issues, this term really caught my eye. Interviews always ask the question, “How do you see yourself….?” What the interviewers fail to ask is how the interviewee has reflected on that vision, measured the process, and readjusted their rationale. As life long learners, I would more interest in the second question than the first.

I wanted to thank Jessie for the opportunity she gave the class to do some personal reflection in the discussion board. Besides, reflection is a part of critical thinking, assessment, and adult learning.

Practice vs. Skill......

Does disagreement facilitate critical thinking? Hopefully learning facilitates critical thinking, but this week a disagreement really prompted me to think critically. One of our cohort member stated that a person can be as good a writer as anyone as long as they put in enough practice. Several members of the cohort agreed with this opinion and naturally I was left standing on the other side of the fence. The example I gave was in regards to the recently passed Major League Baseball draft. I stated that thousands of collegiate and high school baseball players are drafted and less than one-percent of them will ever reach the major leagues. Sure, with practice, people can achieve greater heights than anyone anticipated, but at the end of the day it comes down to a certain skill level. Shouldn’t the fact that these baseball players already have logged hundreds of hours of practice, yet less than one-percent of them will ever reach their life long dream.

If it was true that anyone can be as successful as they want to be by practice, than the world would be filled with lawyers, doctors, and professional athletes? Essentially, I could be a professional football player if I wanted to? Wrong! Practice is only part of the equation to succeed. The rest consists of physical make-up, determination, lucky breaks, and yes, skill. Perhaps the first part of the previous sentence is where the difference of opinion occurs. What degree are we measuring success by, personal fulfillment, self-satisfaction, or the ultimate fantasy? A disagreement can be as simple as interpretation of the desired outcome.

This week’s articles on assessment covered two really important themes:
1.) There are many different ways to conduct assessment. Some of them work wonderfully and others maybe flawed. The bottom line is that assessment must be done often and without it, it’s impossible to define the quality of education an institute credits its students with.
2.) The time frame and content that is associated with an assessment. Some of the questions this week dealt with cumulative scores of designated tests for assessment while others posed questions on time frames and of conducting assessments.

I have researched how often specific programs should conduct assessment and they answered about the same, “as often as possible or whenever necessary.” The bottom line is that there is not a specific map or book that issues a suggested method. Some of the research I saw concluded that assessment is not conducted as much as it should be. I posed the question, “shouldn’t we be assessing the way we conduct assessment?”

The reason I suggested this question was based upon an article I read about new program assessment. Some colleges wait as long as five years to conduct a follow-up assessment after the program’s inception. I was perplexed by this thought. Shouldn’t a new program be open to annual assessment? Even for a year? Then again, SCC’s Continuing Education Division has gone over ten years since its last formal assessment. Like I said, there are some varying degrees on the interpretation of how often assessment should be conducted. Maybe too long!

Hats off to the Kelly and Gina D. for an outstanding week of seminar leadership. The questions they posed on the college assessments compare and contrasts were great. In fact, their questions could easily have posed as group case studies. They both showed a great deal of critical thinking in preparation for this week!

Learning to learn to learn.....

Remember when we constructed our online courses? How about when we incorporated multimedia files in education? What about blogging? The bottom line is those are all things we learned about and then executed. This week's chapter posed an interesting question, "what does it mean to learn to learn." I would attribute the "learn to learn" concept to a couple of actions, comprehend and execute. I don't think learning can transpire without action. If it's a two step process, wouldn't we call it "learning to learn to learn?"

The reading this week discussed a necessity for learning, autonomy. There are three types of autonomy: intellectual, emotional, and moral. Naturally, I paired moral autonomy with ethics. Although ethics were never mentioned directly with moral autonomy, the characteristics are clearly identifiable. Decision makers with a high sense of moral autonomy must exercise personal and professional ethics when developing young minds.

Autonomy in the student-teacher relationship is a give and take. Instructors take the autonomy given to them and share with their students. Without autonomy, students are less likely to develop their social and intellectual abilities.

Autonomy at SCC is even more powerful. If you lack autonomy, it's going to be very challenging to make a dramatic difference. In Continuing Education, a support staff member (my title) has no freedom to develop program curriculum without autonomy. If you cannot develop curriculum, it's pretty difficult to develop students. Let me refer to my "learning to learn to learn" equation. If I have never developed curriculum, don't I have to "learn" how to do it first? Unless I can prove I have relevant experience in the development process, does that discredit any curriculum I have assisted to development?

The bottom line is this, if someone wants to make a difference, they must have a proven track record, skilled know how, and level of authority to do any type of development.

I promise I will let go of these Yogi Berra blogs next week. I read two many blogs that think they have to incorporate as many Journalistic rules as possible. I guess it's all running together.

Raising the Bar......

I posed an interesting question at the end of my week two seminar reflection. The question was related to the quality of work fellow co-hort memeber will put out over the next eight weeks (remember, I asked this in week 2). This week KZ did conducted what I consider the best student led seminar this quarter. I think KZ used the best combination of interactive media, thought provoking questions, and scholarly articles in any of the weeks. I am not discrediting any of the previous weeks seminar leaders (heck I led two myself), I just came away very impressed this week.

I like to pride myself on the ability to ask thought provoking questions, but KZ asked the most thought provoking question I have encountered this quarter.

The appendix at the back of your text has examples of 5 rubrics beginning on p. 121 used to assess learning goals in the University Studies Program at Portland State University. Look at them and take a moment to be overwhelmed. Now here is your question. You are on the assessment team at your college. Each program (Radiography, IT, Early Childhood Education, Medical Assisting, Media, Continuing Education, Fire Science, etc.) must assess themselves on a yearly basis. You would like the team to consider the use of rubrics for the individual programs. Each program would have the same basic format of rubric with some modifications for program differences. Let’s hear your explanation to the assessment team of why your college programs should use rubrics for assessing their programs. Describe some of the dimensions that might be included in the program rubric.

I am going to assume I was not the only person blown away by that question. It did not draw a student response until Saturday. When I finished my response I was not sure if I had answered the satisfactory. The question asked for specific characteristics and my response basically said this question was not applicable in my current situation. When someone poses a question of "how can" and you get a response of "you can't," is that an open-minded, practical answer?

This concludes our textbook on rubrics. I wanted to finish this blog with some thoughts I have on rubrics.
-When I first read the preface of the book, I thought this book was going to shove Portland State's ideas on them down our throats. I was wrong, the book provided great information and objectivity.
-Every coin has two sides. I was constantly in search of the opposing view of using rubrics. Turns out there isn't an abundance of information on this topic. I am glad my fellow cohort members share the same skepticism as me; meaning rubrics are great as long they are used correctly and in the right situations.
-Although the term rubric is new to me, I have encountered them in many stages of my academic development. Many past teachers were using them already, they just may not have known it.

The Pieces of the Puzzle....

Have you ever spent hours putting a puzzle together? How many times did you want to quit because it just got too frustrating? Once it was finished, weren't you glad you hung in there and finished it? That is the best analogy I could use for my comprehension of rubrics. I think the material this week has brought my understanding of rubrics full circle. I even went all out and read the eight page chapter on external sources using your rubric for grading. Over-achiever, I know.

The more I read this book, the more I like it. At first, I thought we were going to become experts on building rubrics at Portland State. The two-sided opinions of the book continue to amaze me. I am not used to brutal honesty in academic writings. If the rubrics are inappropriate for certain situations, it tells you. The readings aren't try trying to sway the reader, they just want to give us a heads up of what we are heading into before we jump in the pool. The book truly is an introduction to rubrics which might be a little elementary for a graduate level class. Not this one.

I thought the exercise using the SCC Online rubric was brilliant. The rubric is not meant a simple class, it's for the entire college. When you consider we have over 175 online classes, this is a pretty important resource.

I would like to thank Fran for a great job on the scoring rubric information. Perhaps the SCC Online rubric should carry that title. Many cohort member pointed out some potential flaws with the SCC rubric. If we can see them, is it time to revise? That leads to another question, how often is that rubric updated?

For novice rubric people like me, the information this week was great. I enjoyed to see the different approaches our faculty are using in their classes. I asked a question regarding our very first GMIT 510/520 assignment, Did Pat attach a rubric when he handed back our individual papers? I think it would be a great assignment for us to go back and look at the rubric he used and how the feedback was portrayed. Just a thought.

What's half of ten? Five. Five down, five to go!

Socially speaking......

Have you ever been on a roller coaster screaming your lungs out, traveling at outrageous speeds, and then all of a sudden it stopped? Up-side-down! That is how this week has felt. I have been through four states and three times zones over the past several days and it feels like I can't stop. This week reading in GMIT 650 was a great one for this cohort because it dealt with a lot of the social characteristics people in this class encounter. We have a pretty large range in age among our adult learners in this program. I was glad to see none of them view themselves as "golden year" disciples, especially after last weeks article on menopause.

Hats off to Rex for week well done. I really liked the questions and articles he found for us. The flash file was great. I was wondering who would be the first person to use multimedia as a resource rather than a website.

Believe it or not, this was a week I really enjoyed the reading. The content was easy to comprehend and very applicable to me personally. I wanted to conclude this week's blog with my interpretation of Minois' view on social organization influences the social status of the old.

1. Extent of state protection. Has this ever been more correct with the cost of health care, possible reduction of social security, and layoffs in this country

2. Strength of oral tradition. In order to to look to the future, we must first look to the past!

3. Valorization of physical beauty. Experience and knowledge are inner beauty, not external.

4. Extended family. No kids, but one extremely supportive wife.

5. Creation of movable wealth. It helps when someone else picks up 66% of the tab.

Discussing the Discussion Boards

There is a time and a place for everything! Right? This week it was brought up that some cohort members (yes, me) were being disrespectful to the seminar leaders because the conversations and replies took a life of their own. First of all, I think there are two kinds of disrespect; intentional and unintentional. I never meant for my replies to be "disrespectful" to our seminar leaders and fellow cohort members. I always thought I was contributing to the topic at hand. There is one thing we all have in common on the discussion boards, we all work at SCC and I would have to think that factor is going to carryover to the discussion board, especially since we are all students in an academic environment.

Raise your hand if you have gotten off topic once throughout this entire GMIT venture. I hope everyone raised their hand. I have to admit that I am not as inclined to hit "reply" and jump in on the conversations this week. If we are supposed to stay on track, should there only be ten reposnses per question? I will be really curious to see the total number of replies on the 660 board this week compared to the previous four. After all, there is a time and place for everything and I hope a "blog" is an appropriate forum to discuss a topic such as this!

A Two-Way Mirror.......

(seminar reflection)

After successfully leading a seminar in what I consider to be a more complicated text, I thought this week would be a breeze. WRONG! I felt as though I was looking into one of those fun house mirrors. The image looking back at me did not look at all like me, but I knew that image was in fact me. One thing I've noticed in both classes is that the conversation is turning into a lot opinion. That is good because people should share their experiences. Now, people are countering questions with sources and answer questions with articles. It's information overload. As students, we have read more material in the first four weeks, then the previous three quarters.

Resources and questions

I think the chapter was easy to comprehend, but somehow I just felt I couldn't get a grip on the discussion board. I appreciate the fact that Kathy Zabel pointed out that one of the suggested sources was NOT applicable to online classes. She was dead on. The only thing the resource referenced to online rubric construction was in the name. I countered KZ's comment with a couple of good online rubric models. I assume they were good because I just noticed they are being used in Fran's week five seminar.

During my first seminar I offered an applicable question for cohort members to answer based on their experience as student/instructors or both. I definitely think I had more success with the first time around. The situation I used this time was not as effective because it just feels like it did not spark an intense intellectual forum. Students answered the question and then moved onto the next. One thing I have noticed it the amount of discussion between the two classes. It seems the GMIT 650 class is drawing far more postings. Is it because people are so used to posting to one discussion board? Maybe. I would attribute it to the material in the 650 class. There is a ton of information there and a lot of room for conversation.

"How much is too much?" Is there anymore overused cliche than that one? I hate that particular question. I think I rebounded nicely with the references for online rubrics. I was hoping for a little more reflection from the class on personal rubric construction in their classes, but the overwhelming responses were about their kid's experiences.

I really wanted to present the "other" side of the coin this week. I spent hours reading through articles trying to find some facts on the negative effects of rubrics. It appears there isn't much of a market for that. The article I did find discussed some areas of flaws, then it contradicted itself and praised them. Rex concluded this resource the best way, rubrics should be used in applicable situations and every case is different.

Leadership

There is a reason I went first and am the first member of the cohort to have my seminars done, I don't mind going first and trying to set the standard for the rest of the class. I had a difficult time inciting rubric conversation because I don't feel I have a lot of experience to bring to the table in this case. Leading is much easier when you are an SME or at least some degree of experience with the subject. Not having either, I had to work that much harder.

Learning Experience

You always hope students come away with some credible knowledge. With all of the resources being offered up, I don't see how one person cannot come away with some new found knowledge. The text is doing a nice job building on the rubric material and that is what I was hoping to accomplish this week. One of the questions I chose asked for instructors to explain their class rubric experiences with the rest of the board. That didn't turn out the way I hoped. There is all kinds of learning going on within the class. We are learning about each other, our professions, SCC, and our selves as we take the reigns of classroom leadership. It's a continuous process and may not be what Pat envisioned, but my motto is if you learned something from a particular situation (good or bad) than nothing is a waste of time.

Format

My thoughts on this format have not changed since my week two seminar. When I tell people that I am almost done earning this degree, working two jobs, and conducting a semi-social life their reaction is amazing. "When do you go to class?" Simple, I don't! It still amazes me people are not aware of how rapidly online education is becoming available. I was talking to my great-uncle last night about this program and he wasn't exactly sure what I was referring to. He mentioned that the University of North Carolina is considering starting online degree programs. I wanted to correct him, but felt there was no need. BTW, he has PHD in Statistics and writes text books for NC State.

I have to ask, is this a generational thing? I carry the label of "techie" on the discussion boards and some people might consider me to have an advantage over some of the others. I think they have the advantage over me. There is no amount of technological knowledge that can overcome years of experience in the classroom. Man, what I wouldn't do to add that to my resume. After all, it's not about how a text book was assembled, it's what is written inside it that makes a difference.

See you in week 5!

An Intellectual Pool...

I'm drowning, in a pool of intellectual knowledge. This week's reading in the "Learning and Change" book were extremely challenging. I think Jessie summed up the challenge the best, each chapter taps into the research of adult learning authors. The text translates their highly recognized work into a coupe of pages. When you look at that equation, it's certain to spell confusion and doom to introductory readers like me. I don't see how it's possible to take a lifetime's worth of research and work and then translate it into comprhendable material, especially in a few pages. Would a PHD student be able to sum up their dissertation into a blog? No! The text teases the reader with a summary of each author's academic history. The descriptions are great, but can I accurately look at the reading and gain a full understanding of the material? I hope not, because if I am supposed to, I'm not!

I can relate part of my struggles to the simple fact that I am not a theory developed learner. I understand one of the biggest keys to comprehension is gaining a understanding of the initial findings and then build upon those finding. I am not a good "theory development" learner. One of the quotes I often refer to is "live in the 'is' and not the 'was'. A student could spend a lifetime investigating and comprehending the author's work. The introduction to each author's work is an incredible task to take on.

The resources for this week were as good as I have ever seen so far. Props to the cohort leaders for providing outstanding examples for these difficult areas. I am a charts and graphs kind of guy. I like the fact you can see all of the authors listed on a chart and then find all of the summarized information. It's a great way to begin a compare and contrast angle or serves as a great reference tool.

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Chapter four took the information on rubric construction and added student participation to the back end of it. I thought the text did an outstanding job in its description of the five rubric models. I was surprised to read the pros and cons on the model descriptions. The text was very forthcoming about what could potentially happen (positive or negative) if a model is used in certain situations.

The most glaring conclusion I took from the readings was the level of work for the instructor and students. I thought the pass-the-hat and Post-it models incorporated a lot of work from the students and not as much work from the instructor. I wouldn't call it these models an easy way out, but they both involve a tremendous amount of work from the students. Since the instructor is key to the successful development of a rubric, I am not a particular fan of rubric models that have a high level of student involvement.

I don't want to touch an awful on on this chapter because I will do so in my seminar reflection (to be posted Monday) Stay Tuned!