Communication for Teachers Reflection

In creating my Communication for Teachers course, I leaned heavily on Project Based Learning (PBL) and Apprenticeship (Bates, 2015). Both theories of learning are based around the idea that you learn best by doing. In the course, students create theoretical situations and reflect on how to handle the communication of the situation and use the communication process to best resolve the issue(s). Each week, a different way of submitting the situation and communicating a solution are presented and students use a specific media to express their ideas. The last week, choice is given as to which form of media will fit their given situation best and they submit their work in that format. Learning in a practical way with situations that are hypothetical gives the opportunity to build on their knowledge as an educator and also reflect on how they may have handled a situation and how better communication might have yielded different results.

Understanding by Design (UbD) is a way of teaching that looks at planning backwards. It asks the questions, “What do you want students to be able to do at the end of this course/unit and how can they show you, authentically, that they can do it?” (McTighe & Seif, 2003). In the Communication for Teacher course, the focus is on applying knowledge of the communication process to situations that arise in the course of educating learners. In designing the course, I wanted to make sure that not only were there examples of WHO you are communicating with, but also the various channels that are used by teachers to communicate. Therefor, while the course is based around different people that educators communicate with (students, parents, teachers, and administrators), it also highlights different channels of communication, such as face to face, email, and phone calls. The authentic applications of the communication process in the course is what the ultimate goal is, and will serve to make the course more meaningful for the learners in the course.

The learners in this course are also educators, and their time is valuable. Having a course available to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is a bonus because they can work when they are able, within the time frame of the course. Using Google Classroom, it is also easy to adjust due dates if the course begins earlier, later, or if you want to offer it several times during the school year. Since all 5 modules are present from the beginning of the course, a student could work ahead if s/he chose, and that could be beneficial to them and their education. If this were taught in a more traditional setting, there may be a seminar or lecture once a week to cover information and then time given to submit assignments. If an educator could not make it to the seminar, there would be time spent connecting with the instructor and some learning could be lost because they were not there. If I were to add a web seminar portion of this course, I would use technology that would allow conversation to occur between the students and instructor as well as a way to record the seminar so that those who could not attend would have access to the same information as those who were able to attend.

When teaching online, you must be sure that you are making the learning meaningful with application to the real world. The assessments in my course use higher-order thinking skills so that, short of plagiarism, there really is no way or reason to “cheat” in the course. In both online and traditional teaching, if we are focusing our assessments on application and evaluation instead of strictly recall of knowledge, not only are we teaching things on a deeper level that our students will connect to, but were are also taking away avenues of academic dishonesty that many worry about in class.

Bates, A.W. (2015) Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (Chapters 3-4). Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

McTighe, J. & Seif, E. (2003). Teaching for Meaning and Understanding – A Summary of Underlying Research.Downloaded from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554.5606&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Reflection