Two prefaces to this post:
1. I'm typing all of this on an iPad, which isn't usually my typing-tool-of-choice.
2. I had a hard time figuring out how this weeks' questions were related to this weeks' readings.
The first question asked what the main considerations of the planning process are. Booth recognizes one of the main considerations the same as the central motivation of librarianship: "catering to the personal learning needs of a diverse community of patrons with information insight, support, and strategy." (95)
So, basically, one of the most important considerations for planning ID is keeping your users and their needs in mind at the forefront.
I found the USER model to be quite intuitive with regards to ID planning.
-First you attempt to understand the scenario as best as possible--the students, the environment, what needs to be accomplished.
-Next, you turn these accomplishment goals into tasks and try and figure out ways to implement them into the lesson.
-The last thing you do before teaching is creating the stuff you will be using to teach with.
-Then you teach!
-But that's not the last step! An important part of the process is reflection and revision. Many librarians see to forget about this last step, especially after they've been teaching the same class for a while. Some of the librarians I observed were really grateful for some debriefing time with a librarian-in-training to help them improve their teaching methods.
The second question this week talks about the difference between program, teaching, and student assessments. The readings didn't touch on this, but my best guess is that the differences would be rooted in what each assessment is looking for.
Teaching assessments would mostly be a measure of You and how well You did.
Student assessments would probably help you gauge how much students got out of what you taught. The readings indicate that students usually prefer immediate applicable takeaways, so a low student eval could indicate a greater need for takeaways.
Finally, program assessments would most likely reflect how much of the necessary tools students are to learn is included in what you covered.
How did typing on the iPad go? I bet it was an interesting experience. I, too, found the USER format interesting. One thing that stood out to me was the discussion about how it was "scalable" (librarians really seem to like this concept, at least at the U). So, for newbie teachers like us, we might carefully use the USER method to plan while those librarians with a lot of experience might only touch on some areas to plan more quickly. Reflection does seem easy to miss/drop off, though, especially during a busy part of the semester.
ReplyDeleteI found that teachers I observed also enjoyed the debriefing at the end. In a couple of situations they even talked about "Man, if I had known the class was like that I would have done x differently." I thought that was encouraging to know that even experienced teachers still know when/where they can make improvements even if they can whip up a lesson plan without methodically going through the USER method.
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