Prior to entering this program I would not have known how to colaborate with three other people on a project if they were not in the same town. The idea would have been overwhelming and I would have probably only used email and social networking. After collaborating on several projects over the last 16 months, the wiki-based study group and collaborative project was not as stressful. The classes I have taken in this masters program so far had prepared me to collaborate online in a large variety of methods. Even with different work and personal schedules, my group was able to work together without much stress or concern. Distance, schedules, and illness did not hamper our efforts. In fact, I found it was easier in some ways to collaborate online. In an office or school environment we would have spent a significant amount of time just trying to select a date and time to meet that would work with everyone’s schedule. Online that was not necessary. The group project allowed us to get first hand experience about cooperative learning. Instead of just reading about how to incorporate cooperative learning with our students, we participated ourselves and that personal experience was reflected in our group project staff development section. Having experienced what our students would experience with cooperative learning, we choose to ensure that the teachers would experience the same thing in the staff development session we created. One of our readings indicated that for formal groups, “ teachers should intentionally design assignments to include these five basic components: positive interdependence (sink or swim together), face-to-face, promotive interaction (helping each other to learn, applauding efforts and success); individual and group accountability (each of us has to contribute to the group achieving its goal); interpersonal and small-group skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making, conflict resolution); and group processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better)” (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007, p140). What I found odd was that as an online group we technically did not have “face-to-face, promotive interaction” with the teacher or each other. We did in fact help each other to learn, applauded eather others efforts and successes though. I think that if technology is the key factor in these lessons, the author should have thought about the fact that in today’s world all classrooms are not face-to-face.
Another of our assignments was to create a UDL lesson plan. Though this lesson plan was an individual project, our group worked to keep our projects similar so it would enhance our group project. We were able to combine our ideas from our individual projects into our group project. We combined individual ideas to create a better group project that entailed more diverse ideas than our indivual projects could ever have included. I will admit that this assignment was my biggest frustration. Not that the assignment was difficult. I did learn more about what type of information should be included in my lesson plan as well as what standards should be met. What frustrated me was this class was mainly centered on group collaboration yet in week 3 we were expected to not only work with our groups we were to create our own UDL lesson plan. It was like we were going in too many directions at one time. This is real life, but I do not think we gained as much knowledge from the UDL as we would have had it been our only area of concentration for that week or even for 2 weeks. I think the UDL should have been a group project that reflected our group effort and topic.
Week 3 also consisted of creating an ebook. The ebook was an interesting concept and one I had never conquered before. Unfortunately I felt I was unable to spend the time on the ebook that I wanted to. Due to the excessive amount of work in week 3, I was not able to spend the time experimenting with the ebook. I found it to be a fun way to interact and actually shared the experience with a friend who wanted to write a story for a niece who lived in another state. I realized my frustration on my time constraints when I went to explain the process to her. I was able to give her a brief overview but since I was struggling for time to spend on the ebook myself I was not able to explain in detail how to create and save the book. In fact, at the end of the week I found out that my ebook was saved but not published and I had to go back in to make a revision to it so others could view it. I believe this is something I would have caught earlier if we had not had so many other assignments in one week. I believe if time had allowed I would have been able to put together a lesson quality book rather than just experiment with the ebook.
The experience I gained from this class is valuable to me as an adult training facilitator and will be valuable to me while working on my internship project. Though I have had experience writing lesson plans for adult trainings, I feel that studying the UDL lesson building process has made me take a second look at how my agency creates lesson plans. In our Training for Trainers couse, instructors are told it is essential to include teaching methods that cover all learning styles. However, our lesson plans are not specifically designed to ensure that is completed. “The UDL framework proposes that educators strive for three kinds of flexibility; to represent information in multiple formats and media, to provide multiple pathways for students action and expression, and to provide multiple ways to engage students interest and motivation” (Rose & Meyer, 2002). In my current lesson plans, student interest and motivation have not been addressed at all. Furthermore, multiple media options have been limited due to budgetary issues; however, this program has introduced me to a number of free and inexpensive technology options I can incorporate and share with management. I will be able to take this information and knowledge I have gained to challenge my collegues to step up their game and provide more flexibility and learning opportunities to our employees.
Sources:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, p140.
Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Web site. Chapter 6. Retrieved march 27, 2011 from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/.
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