Week 6: Engaging in a reflective practice and data analysis as part of the instructional cycle6/21/2023
These two articles felt like a lot of what is best practice on reflection and what I learned and discovered during my COVID online teaching experience of what to do and not to do to in facilitating engaging, effective, and equitable discussions . Knight reminds us of the importance of professional reflection. At my school, an expeditionary learning school, one of our principles. Solitude and Reflection. Both of these refer to taking time to reflect on teaching to improve our classroom results, so consistently question our motives and practices so that we can actually learn from our experiences. Knight's main points are to 1. keep a journal where you actively reflect on you practices of what worked and didn't, why you thought things happened, evidence of student work and quotes from students, as well as materials you could use to improve the lesson and to keep a running list of existing issues in the class, 2. peer observation, where you ask a colleague to observe lesson and give data about lesson, student engagement and the classroom atmosphere, and 3. student feedback, where you explicitly ask students for specific feedback as a part of an anonymous survey. Abney & Conatser speak specifically on 8 things you do to make virtual discussions engaging, effectige, and equitable. The one thing I feel like I hadn't thought about doing was #1, where you openly discuss with your class about how different virtual discussions might feel compared to in-person discussions. Additionally, #6 was very hard for me to do. Besides chat, what other ways are there for one to embrace discussions other than live video? We have all done it: "participated" in a face-to-face discussion, nodding along in agreement, but not really present. Many of us have sat in discussions, afraid to throw in our two cents because we might sound silly. On other occasions, we have had a fantastic idea to share, but the conversation passed by before we had a chance to contribute. What is a way that you have succeeded in engaging your learners in online and asynchronous discussions?
One way I engaged my online learners in discussion was via Zoom chat. I would start each lesson with a THIS or THAT activity, and everyone would be given time to write which thing they liked and why. I would read them out and call on students to share more about what they thought on the topic.
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