Category: Learning Activities Portfolio
In my previous post, I noted that it is so important that students think critically. However, when I look at some of the assessments that the course has, and the auto marked answers on the quizzes, we don’t allow for critical thinking, only verbatim answers. There is obviously a disconnect here. I think that there needs to be some leeway if answers make sense to the questions posed. After all, what better way for students to disengage if the assessment doesn’t match the teaching and learning!
There are, of course, many topics in which there is a correct or incorrect answer (drug calculations for instance). However, we spend much time on topics such as communication and positive attitude, and these are topics in which critical thinking are just as important. I will try and create some formative assessment activities in which I can post a ‘model’ answer key and with student’s permission, I can post each of their answers as well. This way students get to be a part of the process as well as have the opportunity to express their ideas in a safe, non-graded environment.
In veterinary medicine, it is important that students memorize normal values so that if their patient displays and abnormal value, they can flag it for the veterinarian. Students should also recognize if a drug dose that they have calculated is reasonable for the patient in front of them. However, that doesn’t always happen. How do we teach them to think critically about the data they collect?
Now, some might say that what I am describing is not critical thinking; perhaps that is just semantics. Regardless of what we call it, we all need our students to evaluate the information coming at them to decide if it makes sense.
This article has some good ideas for activities to get students to think critically. I think I can use the brain teaser activity (especially given it has a bit of a veterinary focus) for students to realize that they need to judge the information (a cats heart rate of 80 for instance) against what they know to be true (that normal is between 110 and 220). Simply writing down the information in the record without assessing it to be abnormal could spell disaster for the poor kitty.
I did not take advantage of Big Blue Button this semester and I think that was a ‘missing’ in my course. The course I taught came on scene quite late and there was not a lot of time to be able to investigate all the different LMS abilities. I am not as familiar with Moodle as I am with others and unfortunately did not have the ability to look into how to do any sort of video conferencing with students.
In the future, I am going to take advantage of the Strategy 5 from Cuthbertson and Falcone’s (2014, as mentioned here) Best Practices for Building Community: Students love of mobile technologies. I think this will go a long way towards having students be more accountable to one another in their online discussions.
I have a discussion assignment in my course in which students must discuss an ethical dilemma and come to a consensus on how they would handle it. One of the strategies that we use, noted in this article, was that these types of discussions should utilize real-world scenarios. This allows students to begin to synthesize what they are learning into a safe environment, before they must put it to real use.
I found that there was not enough conversation that occurred in this semester for this assignment to be really impactful for the students. I think that the wording of some of the scenarios was not clear enough and there was not enough time for students to work their way through the coursework required to really delve into the topic. For this reason, I extended the due date by a week. I will also be assigning some pre-work, as noted in the above article, to hopefully jump start the discussion.
For my course, I have a student introduction forum. I ask them each to introduce themselves, where they live and one interesting thing about themselves (or unusual pet that they have). I find it allows the students to build some community early on in the course to rely on as they go through the coursework. I also introduce myself to give the students the opportunity to get to know who I am.
This was only done in text format the first time I taught the course. However, I uploaded a video of myself providing general feedback on an assignment that students have to complete that involves them taking video of themselves. It was well-received and I think I will offer the opportunity for students to do video introductions if they choose to increase the connection.