Oh
well, I get it, and I’ll get over it. Thanks for listening.
Since
I don’t have a content area as an instructor, I chose one I’m interested in and
developed a plan for a mythical History of Modern Art class. If it looks a bit
amateurish, well, it is. But I did my best to meet the requirements of the
assignment:
________________________________________________________________________
1.
Lesson Title: Annotated Bibliography of Web and Print Resources on Modern
Artists
2.
Target audience: ARTH 321 History of Modern Art class members
3.
Learning objectives:
- Find, describe, and evaluate online and print resources on the lives and works of a major artist from the Modern period (1860s to 1970s).
- Write evaluative annotated bibliographies in MLA format.
- Build a wiki page in the class wiki with the bibliographies for your group’s chosen artist.
4.
Materials needed:
- Computers with Internet connection
- Print and online texts including artist monographs, exhibition catalogs/retrospectives, and journal articles
- Web sites such as museum sites with significant artist collections, and sites dedicated to the life and work of a specific artist
5.
Learning procedure:
- There are 25 students in the class. For this project, we will form eight groups of three or four students based on your wiki experience and skills as determined in the pre-project survey. Each group will choose one artist to research. Recommended artists include, but are not limited to, Cézanne, Dali, Hopper, Kandinsky, Klee, Klimt, Malevich, Matisse, Miró, O’Keefe, Picasso, and Rivera. Group members will consult among themselves and tell me which Modern artist their group will research.
- Group members will collectively write a short introduction to their artist’s wiki page with essential biographical information.
- Each group member will contribute at least three evaluative annotated bibliographies to the group wiki page, including one from each of the following categories:
- A print text (monograph, exhibit catalog, retrospective, etc.)
- A journal article (print or online) about an aspect of the life or work of the artist
- A Web site (museum dedicated to the artist’s work, museum with a significant collection of the artist’s work, site specifically about the artist, etc.)
6.
Suggested learning activities/practices:
- An evaluative annotated bibliography should provide an accurate MLA citation, a brief description of the content and scope of the reference, and evaluation of its value. See Writing an Annotated Bibliography: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/annotated-bibliography for guidance.
- Consult your group members to share search tips and sources and to avoid duplication of references.
- Each group member will be assigned to proofread and critique another group member’s entries.
7.
Evaluation:
- Groups will be evaluated on the accuracy and quality of their artist introduction, overall consistency and presentation of their wiki page, and evidence of balanced contribution.
- Individuals will be evaluated on the accuracy and quality of their bibliographies, their contributions to the page introduction and overall presentation, and their assigned proofreading/editing.
________________________________________________________________________
An
annotated bibliography is one of the specific types of wiki projects for knowledge
construction discussed by West and West (2009). The lesson plan requires each
student to contribute a bibliography for at least three different categories of
reference sources often consulted when building knowledge about a specific
artist. It also specifies using the citation format most often associated with
this academic discipline: MLA.
As
for fostering collaborative learning, group members must collectively introduce
their chosen artist, consult each other to share search tips and sources and to
avoid duplication of references, proofread and critique another group member’s
bibliographies, and strive for consistency on their wiki page.
Admittedly,
I have greatly truncated the evaluation section of the lesson plan. For an actual
class, I would be sure to provide the students with a detailed rubric and grading
criteria. For this exercise, I was mainly concerned to acknowledge West and West’s
recommendation to provide feedback and assessment to both groups and individuals.
KSU
Cuz
Reference
West, J. A., &
West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for
online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
One thing that I really like about your lesson plan is that you kept your group size small for the project. I have been involved in some disastrous online collaboration projects, one of the main causes seemed to be overly large group size. Larger groups have a couple of problems from my point of view. First, they allow people to hide out. When the group is too big it makes it easy for the workload to be unevenly shared causing the bulk of the work to be done by a smaller amount of people. The other problem with a large group is that it generally requires some kind of instructor assigned leadership. A small group generally can have a more participatory type of leadership, larger groups are harder to handle and usually function better with an assigned leader.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great straight-forward lesson plan. I too used an example from our book that the authors used for knowledge construction. West and West (2009) list 8 words under the 2 goals of remembering and understanding of Knowledge Construction based on Bloom's Taxonomy: define, describe, list, label, summarize, organize, interpret, and elaborate. Your assignment incorporates all of these tasks. It is interesting to me that you detailed the requirements for participation instead of letting the group work out their own responsibilities and contributions. Not only do you determine the number of annotated bibliographies each group member will contribute, but you also say that the instructor will assign group members to proof and critique another's work. I can certainly see merit in this approach, especially with students with limited experience, or younger students who have not demonstrated their maturity for self-directed learning. I think many adult educators aspire for constructivist teaching methods, but it may not always be practical in every aspect of the class. It looks to me as if you have combined several approaches to instructing. You certainly have opportunity for collaboration and social learning, but you also include a safety net of specific, tangible elements that are based on individual performance. Thanks for demonstrating how to take multiple perspectives to create an assignment where both group and individual can be successful.
ReplyDeleteCuz, great lesson plan.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you discussed grading for both the individual and the group. I think that this reinforces to each group member that they have to do more than just the individual portion to get a good grade on the assignment. It also shows that the group is required to do both, cooperate with each other and work on
their own.
I also like how you allow each group to chose their own artist. I believe this is an important step in allowing learners to be ‘self directed’ as Knowles believes is important (pg 91, ‘The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology”). Additionally, this allows the group to work on a subject that they are interested in instead of one that they were assigned.
No rust on you tin man.
Roy,