Collaborative Lesson Planning

Week 1 Homework, sent to members on September 15th.

Hello all:

Welcome to the first week of Collaborative Lesson Planning. I am really excited to have all of you in the class. Below is the reading and homework for the first week. It looks like a lot, but shouldn't take more than fifteen to twenty minutes. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas.

Additonally, I'd like to announce the addition of Dr. Marjorie King as another instructor for our class. She'll be helping with the general class organization and with feedback on the lessons.

Reading:
* Syllabus
** http://p2pu.org/node/5574/document/5575

* Introduction to Copyright Licenses
** CC Licenses: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses
** Public Domain: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Public_domain&oldid=384868836

* Instructor's Speech on Collaborative Lesson Planning
** http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Charles_Jeffrey_Danoff/...

Chose a license for your work and then find somewhere to publish.

Start your journal online in the class forums with the following entries.
* Self-introduction.
* Justification for choice of license.
* Reactions to:
** Syllabus, including suggestions
** The instructor's speech.
* Respond to at least one of your classmates's journal entries.

Addtionally:
* Alternative explanation of CC Licenses
** http://creativecommons.org/videos/mayer-and-bettle2

Note: In the original e-mail "general" in the second paragraph was misspelled, hat tip to Dr. King for finding the mistake.

third through review
(a.k.a. Reviewing the course 1/3 of the way through.)

At first I thought my course was doomed, but a few clicks on the admin button later I realized the course was beginning better than I had hoped. I had four members and the addition of Dr. Marjorie King as a fellow instructor. Two of the members even submitted lesson plans to me as I requested as part of the sign-up task. Heading into the first week I did a very thorough revision of the syllabus to clear things up for myself, and I hoped the other members.

The first week went really well. Got three members starting their own journals, and responding to most of the readings or questions I asked of them. Heading into the second week I did another revision of the syllabus including a grading criteria and then sent out a homework assignment that was short, but longwinded.

Second week did not turn out so well, only had one student write in their journal. I am not sure, but here are my theories for why this happened:

1 - Members have their own lives and are busy. (95% likely)
2 - Members have gotten bored by the course. (4%)
3 - Adding confusing grading criteria to the syllabus scared off the students. (.01%)
4 - My long winded homework e-mail turned off students who would do the work, because I made a little bit seem like a lot (.08%)
5 - Something outside the scope of my imagination (.01%)

The biggest goal is to get students participating. While I have some pie-in-the-sky hopes about what this class might accomplish including a printed-physical document on how to collaboratively plan lessons, none of that matters if the students are not involved.

So, for week 3 I am going to send out a concise, short e-mail asking students to check-in, let me as organizer know how I can help, and (maybe I shouldn't ask, but I shall) if they can send or edit one of their lesson plans.

Half-Way-Ish Review

My apologies that this review is coming a few days late. Week three and into the beginning of week four has seen the course go off in two new directions, one of which I never imagined. The one I did imagine is Dr. King has started her journal [1], and added a insightful self-introduction. The other is Joe's post [2] about how he's decided to declare his course dead and then engages in a discussion about the values of paragogy [3], as opposed to peda- and andragogy.

No new lesson plans up, but overall the course is progressing and evolving. As a change, I am going to personally e-mail each student this week with homework as an attempt to get more folks involved.

[1]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/9415#comment-4054

[2]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/10209

[3]
http://metameso.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/pilot

Week 5 October 13th - 19th, 2010
Review

Week 5 was easily the most successful week thus far. Brylie added an excellent post to her journal [1], including a link to a lesson plan she started. Then she took a huge step I've been hoping to see for a while by going over to a peer's journal (Joe's) and adding a really helpful comment [3], asking him to be more pig-like (in a productive way [4]). Joe, in turn, commented on her journal [5] and followed her lead publishing his own lesson plan [6]. Closing it out, Dr. King got in on the action, sharing some advise with Brylie [7]

This type of interaction leading to "collaborative lesson planning" was the point of the whole course, and its very encouraging to see it actually happening. Over the past two weeks reaching out to students with individual e-mails, as opposed to generalized ones has really helped (I believe), and/or the students intrinsic motivation has led them individually to contribute more and as that's occurred and seeeing others do the same has a snowball-type effect.

Now the question comes, how to finish up the final week. For this week's homework, I'd like to see some sort of wrap-up journal entry by individual students, and an addition of some sort to the document Brylie started "Collaborative Development Methods" [8].

[1]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/10259#comment-4493
[2]
http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Brylie/LessonPlans&oldi...
[3]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/9415#comment-4497
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scrum_%28development%29&oldid=...
[5]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/10259#comment-4498
[6]
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Arided/Paragogy
[7]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/forums/10259#comment-4544
[8]
http://p2pu.org/general/node/5574/document/10260