collaborative research paper

I tried to be very specific in my last post about the wiki the students would do, which is lucky for me because that made this week so much easier! 

 

I choose to use the Collaborative Research Papers in chapter 4. This was mainly due to the fact the students for this lesson are basic education students, trying to learn about the supreme court. It would not be fair for to the students to expect them to do much written analysis on the supreme court or their decisions.   While there will surely be in class discussions on particular cases, think asking them to use the wiki, and do the research and present it in a pleasing manner is enough. 

Now for making the assignment into a Collaborative Research Paper. 

First, I would take West and West advice have an individual Wiki for each group and the home page contain the following:

1. Assigned case

2. Group Members and have them identify their role

3.Deadlines

4. Outline of paper and questions needed to be answered

 

Now if you are following along with book you will say but wait, they say goals, you have deadlines. I think goals for this project are already pretty set up on the questions that needed to be answered.  Also when is it due is really the first thing any student wants to know when first hearing about the assignments. 

Research Page:

According to West and West this will eventually become the reference page but during the project it could be a work table, however, in my assignment it would be the reference page that when ever they find a source they are going to use it automatically goes on that page. This is for student on in person class so their "work table" can be an actual table.

Paper:

While the goal the Colloaborate Research Paper is to create one, I am hoping more for accurate information that is citied and using some other media in the wiki that adds to the page. So while the there should be plenty of type, it may not look like a very traditional paper. 

You might be wondering what the activity was and not willing to go back to my last post, so here it is for you because I like to make it easy for you!

 

 

This activity has students working in research groups to find information on an important Supreme Court case and develop an information poster to share with the class.

    Divide students into groups of four to cover as many of the cases  as necessary.

    Have each group research their assigned Case and create a wiki about their Case. Allow creativity with this project  giving them free range of how they want design the Wiki. The only requirements is they answer the following questions:

1.       when was the court case decided

2.       What was the case about? What was issues that brought it to the supreme court in the first place?

3.       What was the decision of the supreme court?

4.       What was it impact on the country?

  Have students discuss on threaded questions or in class the court cases and what they learned on their subjects. Use debriefing questions below if necessary.      

Debriefing Questions:

    Which cases involved Constitutional questions surrounding the Bill of Rights or the power of one of the branches of government?

    Which cases involved judicial review?

    Which cases involved the executive branch? The legislative branch?

    Did you agree with the Court's decision in the case you presented? Why or why not?

    Did you strongly agree or disagree with any of the other Court decisions presented? Explain why.

 

 

Thanks for reading this week!

 

PS I have discovered another problem with technology, I only have West and West on my Kindle, so I cannot cite any page numbers! So sorry about that!

West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

Lesson Plan

This weeks blog was hard for me. I do not have any thing I am train for that last longer then a day or two where it seemed Wikis would be inappropriate. So I found this lesson plan online for basic education and modified it. 

Here's the link for the orignial:

Lesson Plan

Title:Supreme Court: A closer look.

Target Audience:  Basic Adult Education Students.

Learning Objectives:

Students will understand:

·          

h    How the Supreme Court is part of the checks and balances/separation of powers established by the U.S. Constitution.

·         important cases of the Supreme Court that help define the role of the government in protecting citizens' rights.

·         the rights and responsibilities of citizens as defined by the Supreme Court decisions where liberties have been expanded or limited.

Materials/handouts/Websites needed:

Media components:

    Newshour with Jim Lehrer Extra Web site

    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/

    lessonplans/socialstudies/scotus_powers.pdf

    THE SUPREME COURT Web site

    http://www.pbs.org/supremecourt

    Supreme Court Landmark Case Timeline

    http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/sc_timeline.html

    Oyez Web site

    www.oyez.org

    Supreme Court Concentration

www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/concentration.html

Supplies:

    Pencils, pens, paper

Handouts:

    Ranking the Importance of Supreme Court Cases

    Landmark Supreme Court Decisions Information Poster Activity

    Defining Limits on People's Rights

Class Outline:

Introductory Activities

    Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances among the Three Branches of Government.

    Have students examine the three branches of government and the Supreme Court's role within the checks and balances system. Go to the "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" Extra Web site at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/ lessonplans/socialstudies/scotus_powers.pdf and conduct the activity on "Declare Your Powers."

How is the Supreme Court relevant?

        Divide students into small groups of three or four.

        Distribute the handout, "Ranking the Importance of Supreme Court Cases" to all students.

        Review the directions with them, having them read the case descriptions and discuss their importance.

        Then have them rank each case's importance according to a consensus of the group.

        After each group has completed the rankings, hold a discussion on the reasons for the students' rankings.

Learning Activities

Landmark Supreme Court Decisions Information Wiki Activity

This activity has students working in research groups to find information on an important Supreme Court case and develop an information poster to share with the class.

    Divide students into groups of four to cover as many of the cases  as necessary.

    Have each group research their assigned Case and create a wiki about their Case. Allow creativity with this project  giving them free range of how they want design the Wiki. The only requirements is they answer the following questions:

1.       when was the court case decided

2.       What was the case about? What was issues that brought it to the supreme court in the first place?

3.       What was the decision of the supreme court?

4.       What was it impact on the country?

  Have students discuss on threaded questions or in class the court cases and what they learned on their subjects. Use debriefing questions below if necessary.      

Debriefing Questions:

    Which cases involved Constitutional questions surrounding the Bill of Rights or the power of one of the branches of government?

    Which cases involved judicial review?

    Which cases involved the executive branch? The legislative branch?

    Did you agree with the Court's decision in the case you presented? Why or why not?

    Did you strongly agree or disagree with any of the other Court decisions presented? Explain why.

Evaluation:

Students will show mastery of information through test.

Wiki will be graded as the following as there will mainly be pass fail assignment.

Excellent:

Answered all required questions, Plus additional information about the case.

Used a different media in the wiki, ie youtube links, other widgets

All information was accurate.

Good:

Answered required questions.

Used mainly text that was formatted using different sizes and color.

Information was accurate.

Poor:

Not all questions were answered.

Very plain formatting.

Information was mostly accurate.

Wikis: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

The title is a bit of a misnomer for me.  I find very little cons with wikis. In fact the one drawback that I can find for the wiki was solved in this class by using the group section K-State online.  Which allows keeping threaded discussions about the wiki so users can know who did what but what is expected next without having to keep track of several emails.

From personal experience I like them. They are an easy way to get collaborating with other students.  The wiki program I have used was very simple to learn to navigate and easy to learn. I will state that I have only used one Wiki program and not familiar with others but I would not hesitate to use a Wiki in a classroom setting. I can see even using a wiki in my current job to facilitate more collaboration and information exchange across the state.

For online classroom, Wikis are welcome because they bring variety to classes. While there are a variety of options for instructors to use on the web, most instructors seem to stick with threaded discussion and essays. Wiki are neither but still get students diving into the content and thinking about them more.

Since I am in the Pro wiki camp, I found West and West very interesting this week. I did not know there was so many Wiki Options out there! I have already started to explore some of them and astonished that they all seem pretty easy to use. At least the free one’s . I am not so interested that I am going to pay for a site just see how they work!

“Blogging: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners”

For this week’s topic we have an interesting perspective to blog about blogging, more specifically in adult education.  This could be very useful to students and faculty, with many pros  for learning.

One of the pros I am experiencing right now. Let me explain. Usually, because I never devote enough time on the weekends to reading, am one of the last to respond to threaded discussion. When I do finish reading on the deadline that I am supposed to post, I usually read what other students posted first about the topic, not only to make sure I got what others got out of the reading  but also that I to make sure that I am not really just stating what others have said. However, due to me reading others ideas first, I almost always feel like I am just writing what others have said. Here on blogs, it was way to cumbersome to read what others have said first, so I know at least I am typing what I got out of the reading, not what others students thoughts on topics influenced my own.

Another pro to blogging is that is very reflective. King and Cox (2011) discuss this on page 92-93. They discuss how it helps develop critical thinking skills, something of a goal for most graduate programs. A Study that I ran into on another class also discussed reflective writing had on medical residents (Linked here). The study had an assignment for students to write and comment on blogs about bedside manner and patient care. Most of the students found the blogs helpful and discovered things about themselves they might not have if they had never blogged. 

While there are many other pros that blogs have, given the title of the topic, we need to move on.

A major con of blogging is more for the instructor then the students. The instructor has to be willing to make a time commitment to reading the blogs, the comments on the blogs, and then responding themselves. This is very time consuming as discussed in King and Cox (2011) on page 93.  The instructor does not have the ease of a threaded discussion. Each blog is an individual website.

Another con of blogging is the prep time of teaching students about blogs and how to use them.  We all like to talk about the younger generation being more tech savvy.  As discussed the reading this does not mean they are natural at creating a blog and blogging. Blogging is not Facebook and twitter. Many people share their lives through the social media sights and while reading blogs, have never had to create their own. An instructor would be wise to ensure that each student knew where to go and how to create a blog, no matter the age of the students, so they can be successful.

I think blogs have great potential in adult education. I think they might be seen as less work by the students that actually might be able to get them to reflect more. This a is based on a personal antidote, I have to share. I recently discussing a with a co-worker, who is getting her masters in Social Work about this class requiring me to blog. She also this semester has to maintain a blog. In discussing the criteria for our respective blogs,  her was going to be mainly based on reflections of her experiences on an internship. At the end of the conversation she stated “Oh well, as least its not a reflective journal, I hate those.” Which not to burst her happiness that she basically was doing one, I did not point that out to her.