Clicker Question

First attempt:

As a soil weathers, the salts move first, and then finally the clays which in turn the horizons start to develop and differentiate. What most likely would this soil order be?

A.      Mollisols

B.      Alfisols

C.      Oxisols

D.      Vertisols

The purpose of this question is to see if the students understand the soil orders.  I will ask the students to answer the question. Than allow the student to get into groups of 2-3 and discuss the question and reanswer the question again. Open class discussion will follow.

Second Attempt:

As a soil weathers through time, precipitation and additions of vegetation aid in that weathering process. Usually first to move within the soil profile are the salts and last to move are the clays creating different horizons. A profile that has extremely developed horizons would be what soil order?   

A.      Mollisols

B.      Alfisols

C.      Oxisols

D.      Vertisols

E.       Mollisols and Oxisols

After reading the handout in class and talking with Margot I realized that I should be more detailed in my clicker question based on the examples in the handout. The students needed more background and information in the question. Also to stimulate more discussion, I added E to get the students to interpret the option of having two soil orders that could fit this situation. By adding the E would require the students to make significant decision making choices in hence active discussion would take place. The correct answer is C.

Take home message

From the class by Dr. Boyer, I learned about the 4 C’s (curate, communicate, collaborate, and create) and how technology was applied to each one of them.  Also, the biggest take home message of all was about social bookmarking sites. I had no idea about this and so I found this extremely useful!

Technology

1)     Should all forms of new technology be incorporated into the classroom right away within the following semester or should there be a gradual incorporation within the classroom?

2)     Is there any sound advice on how to reduce the amount of technology hassle during the class period?

3)     Is using technology in the classroom always beneficial?

Active learning in the classroom

Active learning involves many things. For me it is to engage the student in learning within the classroom. As a teacher, we want to increase the feedback from the student to teacher and vice versa. Active communication is a big part of active learning within the classroom. There cannot be a one sided conversation within the classroom.

For an active learning activity in the classroom, I plan to put into use think-pair share activities for a higher level soils class. I would implement this by having the class partner up with another person. Then, I would pose a challenging thinking question to them. For instance, I would post a picture of a soil profile on the PowerPoint and ask the groups to figure out what types of soil forming processes could be occurring.  This group activity allows for individuals to interact and creates dialogue with each other especially for challenging areas of topics. After 10 minutes have passed, I would open the classroom up for a large group discussion to see what ideas the groups have come up with. This allows me as an instructor to see if the concepts of soil forming processes were understood or not. 

Student assessment

Student assessment is a good thing however it must be clearly defined. Meaning when professor is evaluating a student for a potential grade it needs to be clearly explained either before it is done or in the syllabus not after the grade is give. Often times the assessment is vague and not clear. When probe by the student sometime the faculty member maybe become agitated by the student for the question and say refer to the syllabus.  There is a reason why the student is asking the question because it was not clearly explained in the syllabus.

The role of the assessment is to clearly explain what the student is to gain from the assignment and how the student will be evaluated. The assessment will help the student by providing feedback in how to improve/learn/grow for the next assignment.  If the assessment is provided back before the next assignment is turned in it allows growth for the student to improve how the homework/writing etc. should be completed. 

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is complex and has many variables. Through this activity, it helped to broaden my awareness of how much time it really takes to fully comprehend what formative assessment really entails. Formative assessment has many parts. For me, when I would describe to a colleague what the most salient features of formative assessment would be is to support student learning. In order to support learning, this would require many steps. There would have to be teacher/student interaction which would require various activities such as pre questions to identify preconceptions and then post questions to reflect on what the student has learned.  

Reflections on Interview

        Based on the suggestions posted on my blog, I had altered my interview questions to include a set of four scenarios. By including the scenarios, it allowed me as the interviewer to identify the student’s conceptual understanding instead of the student reciting facts. The mock interview I had with Tara was helpful to fully understand how the interview questions would work. 

Both Tara and I had no knowledge about each other’s subject which gave us as the interviewers a unique opportunity to fine tune our questions.  I found that by having the four scenarios within my interview questions proved helpful and it was useful to have North Dakota geography as the background. This gave Tara something that she could relate to and identify with, which allowed the interview to go smoother. I also found that during the interview giving common examples e.g. a straight road vs. a curvy road allowed for Tara to relate a difference in landscape. For me, the preparation of examples could have made the interview a little smoother so from next time I will have some common examples already prepared.  For the interview, I will keep the 4 scenarios and have examples prepared in case the student needs something to relate to. Even though we had no knowledge in the subject, our interviews overall went very successful.