Design Process

  My Final Thought : Overall I enjoyed this process and really feel it benefited my teaching team and students.  Parts that felt overwhelming were getting started or not having time to do it the way I wanted.  I noticed that while going through my PoP I caught myself walking through the design process over and over again.  I think this helped me to be able to put this project together.  I was able to have the time to process and look at the goal in different ways, then come back to it and make adjustments I had thought of.   I wish that I was able to look at all my teaching in this manner but time is too valuable.  What I will be doing is looking to see where my biggest issues are for groups or individuals and use this process to create solutions like I did with my problem of feedback with the students this year.  I really enjoyed having built a way to teach to my class’s needs.  I see and felt the value of involving them in the planning...

  Testing : The testing process worked really well.  Students came to class and shared their builds.  All the other students used the feedback form they created while each person presented.  They then gave the presenter their feedback form.  Each student had lots of feedback and each time the students were instructed for the comments section to give positives, explain their scores, and give suggestions. I did follow-up questions once the activity was over to see how the students felt and what they learned.  I was pleased to see that most of the students now had a better understanding of what feedback is, how to use it, and how to do it in a mature way.   I struggled with getting all my students to do the testing process due to covid cases.  My school had to shut down two days prior to our Spring Break which is when we planned to do our presentations.  We also had people choose to self quarantine so they could go on there break out of ...

  Prototyping : My prototyping phase was aimed to make the students be involved as much as possible.  In doing so I was hoping for more buy in to the test and having higher achievement or outcomes in my results.  I combined the use of a story titled, The Junkyard Wonders and the movie, The Lorax to make an Earth Day celebration/project.  I had the students come up with the criteria for how the project would be graded.   ~Must only be used from thrown out or recycled materials (repurposed materials).   ~Must be weatherproof.   ~Must be free standing/self supported.   ~Must be 1-2 feet in size (length/width/height).   ~Must look like the Lorax.  ~ Must use creativity.   Using this information they were given a week and a half to construct a Lorax figurine and create a slogan based upon the character traits they identified.  I found that this process held true to the ideas of prototyping in that it...

  Ideate : Thinking abroad and then narrowing.  My problem was that my students didn’t know what feedback was used for.  Working this out through a “ Why Ladder ” I was able to see that students until now had been told what to do and how to do it.  My Problem is:  Students don't understand what feedback is and how to use it appropriately to better their work. Why? Because the majority of their experience with feedback is giving it in games or apps that they play/use. Why? Because at fourth grade they have been told exactly what to do to check off a box or criteria of “meeting” a skill/standard. Why? I believe this is done so they can be taught the basic skills that are necessary for learning until they can be given feedback and use that to form better results on their own. Why?   Because by having the basics or foundations they can then learn more complex skills and individualize them. Why? Because this is age appropriate learning and the progression is to ...

  Define : Here I made a 9 question survey that I gave to my students.  This was given so I could gain an understanding of their knowledge or misconceptions.  Here is a link to the report and in the report a link to the survey I used.  The results showed me that the students mostly thought of feedback as a rating system.  Most of them explained that they gave feedback when rating a game or app.             What this allowed me to do was to define the students level of understanding and tell me how to move forward.  Essentially they had little understanding that the survey showed they were confused at best.  Some of them would answer a question that showed a solid understanding and then later that same student showed a lack of understanding.   I sought to start showing them different types, defining feedback, giving examples, and having them practice using it. But, I first need to see where the breakdow...

  Empathize : During the EMPATHIZING stage I started by trying to do something to big.  My initial thought was to try and make my lessons engaging for both virtual users and face to face users.  After discussing this topic/idea with my professor we determined that if was to big and could really show how it was being effective when I had no control or that there were to many variables in the virtual side of my lessons (were there parents supporting, were the students following the sequence, are they in an environment that is conducive to good learning…).   We looked at more ideas and came up with an issue that my colleagues and I were noticing.  We had noticed a lack of positive impact on feedback that we gave to our students.  My professor and I thought that we could use this as my Problem of Practice.  I first needed to understand why my students weren’t able to use the feedback that we gave.  After thinking on it and discussing with my team...