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Read
Read Chapter 1: Surfacing Backward Design from Small Teaching Online. Come to the next session ready to apply backward design to creating your open pedagogy assignment.
The link above goes to the e-book chapter in one of our Library databases. Let us know if you have trouble logging in to read the chapter.
Draft
Begin drafting your assignment, applying advice from the Surfacing Backward Design chapter for what to include in assignment instructions:
- Here’s what I want you to do: I explain the task.
- Here’s why I want you to do it: I explain the reason this task will contribute to the student’s success in class and beyond.
- Here’s how to do it: I provide detailed instructions, rubrics, checklists, and exemplars to help students clearly see and understand my expectations.
Post
Post a rough sketch of your assignment below (really rough is okay!). This can be notes or bullet points–a first attempt to capture/structure your ideas about the assignment.
Bonus
If you have time and interest, here is a podcast episode interviewing the author of Small Teaching Online, Flower Darby.
7 thoughts on “Open Pedagogy Backward Design”
I would like to create an informal, somewhat low stakes writing assignment that explores the issue of cultural repatriation. I have always incorporated a version of this assignment in my classes, but typically have done so in passing, sometimes as in-class discussion or in Blackboard’s Discussion Board. The results have been mixed with some short responses saying “yes, this artwork should be returned” to others exploring broader ideas of how to acknowledge marginalized cultures and decolonize institutions.
Here is a rough outline of the assignment and where it’s headed:
a. What is cultural repatriation: Read about this here:
b. Prompt: Should the artwork be returned to its country of origin? Why or why not?
c. Rubric:
i. Does the student answer the prompt and provide a viable alternative to how artwork can be returned or remain at current institution?
ii. Does the student provide reasons to explain his/her position on the matter?
iii. Does the student provide examples of other artworks that have either been returned to or remained in the institution?
When students open the syllabus, they will see a small video of me welcoming them. Then I will proceed for them to select one of the learning outcomes and to explain the task in their own words. They could do this using audio or a video or, of course, a writing example.
In the video I created to welcome the class, I would explain why I want them to do that task and how it will lead them to become competent student writers that will help them throughout their college careers.
Also, in my video, I will use an example of another syllabus learning and model it, so students will know how to do the task.
I usually use Screencast-O-Matic, but it hasn’t worked for me lately.
Updated 6/15 @ 12:40pm
Copy of backward-design-planner-adapted
Each group will design reading questions (based on the goals for the Module) for all other groups to answer, then the answers will be peer graded in a classroom discussion.
Each group will design/modify activity assignments for groups to do.
PSY100_S23_Mod1_ReadingAssign
The AFN 113 course on African Development is being revised. For now, tentative assignments include short essays, a presentation, and group research which can be from visits to the AU at the UN HQ in NY and from students’ independent research from learning resources.
REFLECTION 1 : Slavery (Disenfranchisement)
REFLECTION 2: The Scramble for Africa – (Colonialism)
REFLECTION 3: Colonial Rule and Missionaries (Colonial Mentality)
REFLECTION 4: Gender, Colonialism, and Islam (Culture and Tradition)
REFLECTION 5: Decolonization – (Black Consciousness)
REFLECTION 6: History and Modernity in Africa (Neo Colonialism)
TOPIC: Africa and The African Diaspora: Looking Within and Ahead. A Continent and Its Peoples
Relate ANY ONE of the following topics below to the above theme. See the syllabus for
suggested reading and course resources that cover the topics below that we have discussed
throughout the course of the semester. The final exam theme is to tie all the previous discussions
in class to moving ahead and looking ahead.
Teaching is a great opportunity. In fact, I use my skills a storyteller to create connections for what the students read and the world at large. The way I see the classroom has a lot to do with the experience I want to provide for students. This assignment that I am designing is going to be “exciting” and “fresh”. Giving the students to use critical thinking to empower what they learn individually would be a great way to have ownership over the course. While the assignment is under construction, I can offer you a sneak-peek. With a performance based pedagogy, I would transform the way students engage with learning by allowing them to contribute to the building of the project.
Professor Van Havercome
(Department of English)
Learning with an Open Pedagogical Approach