Week 2- Intellectual Standards

Badge Activities- Due Sunday 11:59PM

Create your Intellectual Standards post in our week 2 Laulima workshop Forum.

1. Watch the 2 videos  above in the Summary and read The Thinker’s Guide to Intellectual Standards, pages 3-12
   1. In a Forum post complete the following statements- always using your own words for each statement
      1. Clarity
         1. I understand “clarity” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting clarity would be…
      2. Accuracy
         1. I understand “accuracy” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting accuracy would be…
      3. Precision
         1. I understand “precision” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting precision  would be…
      4. Relevance
         1. I understand “relevance” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting relevance would be…
      5.  Depth
         1. I understand “depth” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting depth would be…
      6.  Breadth
         1. I understand “breadth” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting breadth would be…
      7.  Logic
         1. I understand “logic” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting logic would be…
      8. Significance
         1. I understand “significance” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting significance  would be…
      9. Fairness
         1. I understand “fairness” to mean…
         2. In other words, [elaborate in a few sentences]…
         3. An example of someone exhibiting fairness  would be…
      10. The purpose of the assignment is…
      11. The key question at the heart of the assignment is…

Guidelines for Providing Feedback to Others

1. Improving Your Assessment of Others
   1. What is allowed- Reasoning
      1. How could this post be improved?
      2. What exactly needs to be done to improve it?
   2. What is not allowed-
      1. No general statements of like or dislike.
      2. No sweeping comments. “Nice post, insightful and interesting”, type statements are not helpful. These type of statements only tell how you, and your ego, emotionally reacted to the post.
   3. Course instructor will model the assessment process to provide examples for learners to follow.
2. Assessment of Feedback to Others
   1. Is your own feedback reasoning deficient?
   2. Course facilitator will model and comment on how you give feedback, using the intellectual standards, to help you improve your  reasoning skills.
3. Improving Your Writing
   1. Revise and improve your posts based on feedback given, or
   2.  Challenge part of the assessment and explain with reasoning, why it is not necessary.

Note: Receiving evaluative feedback using the standards should not be taken personally when the feedback captures a potential weakness. We can always improve our reasoning and should be willing to accept feedback – this shows intellectual humility.

Format to use to give feedback.

1. When a standard was not well met: I am questioning the _INSERT THE INTELLECTUAL STANDARD_ of your statement ____________ because _______.
2. When a standard was well met:  Your statement had _INSERT THE INTELLECTUAL STANDARD_ when you said….

Provide Feedback on two different week 1 posts using the intellectual standards.

1. This week you will begin providing feedback to 2 different learners posts –
2. Go to last week’ s Week 1 Forum discussion in Laulima to comment on posts from last week.
3.  Provide feedback to two different learners posts.
   1. When a standard was not well met: I am questioning the _INSERT THE INTELLECTUAL STANDARD_ of your statement ____________ because _______.
   2. When a standard was well met:  Your statement had _INSERT THE INTELLECTUAL STANDARD_ when you said….
4. Give this your best shot. If you are the one receiving the feedback, please don’t take it personally. This is about getting practice in providing feedback.

• Give students clear expectations about online discussion requirements, deadlines, and grading procedures.
• Assess the quality as well as the quantity of the students’ online posts.
• Use rubrics to allow students to have a clear guideline of your expectations for the quality of their posts.
• Provide a schedule for  discussion board deadlines.
• Give as much notice as possible.
• Provide structure for students to post to threads. A good structure lessens the frustration of what to write.
• Make yourself visible in the discussion. Students will be more likely to engage in the discussion if they see you as being a part of it.
• Do not allow domination of the discussion. If students are dominating the discussion, privately ask them to slow down a little.

Design Strategy: Align Prompts with Objectives

Before you even begin writing your discussion prompts, look at your module or unit level objectives – what knowledge and skills do you want students to develop in your course? Connect your questions to your objectives.We highly recommend using Bloom’s taxonomy to write your learning objectives.
The objectives should be student-centered and measureable. Depending on the learning objective, using Bloom’s Taxonomy will provide a starting place for you to design an appropriate level of question. Knowledge and comprehension focused questions (i.e., “Identify” or “define” type questions) do not generally lead to quality discussions, unless they are tied to higher order thinking.  The lower level questions tend to have one right answer and do not encourage a variety of responses.

Design Strategy: Write Open-Ended Questions

All too often, discussion prompts have only one answer and do not generate discussion – everyone has the same answer. In addition to aligning your prompts with your objectives, think about questions that will elicit different responses from each student.
Types of Open-Ended Questions

• Introductions – Introductions serve a dual purpose – as a way of building a learning community by getting to know each other and to practice using the discussion tool in a non-threatening way (no prior knowledge needed; not graded).
• Ice Breakers – Ice Breakers are designed to get students thinking about the material or concepts and build connections with peers.  If these exercises are not assessing an objective, they are not graded.
• Clarifying Explanations – These questions usually start at the lower level of thinking skills but build to a higher level. Students are generally asked to clarify a concept and then demonstrate their knowledge and comprehension of concepts by referencing instructional materials.
• Question Assumptions – Instead of asking students if they agree with a particular statement, try asking the following questions instead:  What other explanations might account for this? What are the assumptions behind this statement?
• Explore Additional Evidence – This type of prompt asks students to identify additional evidence supporting or refuting a concept or idea. It may also ask students to explore a concept more deeply by ranking or justifying their thought process.
• Multiple Perspectives – These prompts allow students to express different ideas, theories or opinions.
• Real World Implications – This type of prompt asks students to demonstrate knowledge of a concept by applying it to a real work example.
• Self-Reflective Processes – Reflective activities require students to share a synthesis of the learning experience, or to describe how a situation or experience has personal value to them.