EDUC 804 Assignments

SFU EDUC 804 Assignments (Fall 2005)

Your final grade for the course will be determined based on the following components:

20% Contributions to between-class discussions (on-line)
40% "Tradition" paper
10% Peer reviews of two other students' "Tradition" papers
30% Personal inquiry (oral presentation)

Each of the above items will be assigned a letter grade, according to criteria that will be discussed in class. The weighted average of the components listed above will become your final grade in the course.

Late Policy

If you are late in submitting something for class, marks will be deducted from what you earn for the assignment at a rate of a half letter grade per day. This formula means that it is possible to get an A on a perfect assignment which is one day late. After three days, a perfect assignment could only receive a B+. At five days late, the best a perfect assignment could get is a C.

On-line Discussions

Our on-line discussions each week start with each student making a short written reaction (about 200 words) to the assigned readings for class, and posting it on our on-line discussion forum. This should be done by Monday evening at the latest so that other students can read it and respond. Since our class meets face-to-face each week, the purpose of the on-line discussion is to maximize what we get out of the face-to-face discussions in class, not replace them. Having some limited discussion on-line prior to class helps to ensure that everyone has thought a bit about the readings before we meet, and given consideration to how others' thoughts about them differ. With this done, we can concentrate our face-to-face discussions on evaluating the ideas that have been put forward, and working toward a more cohesive view of the field. This is extremely difficult to do on-line.

Your on-line reaction may be one or a combination of:

your own reasoned stance on an issue or question raised in the readings (it's OK to disagree with the author -- even if it's me!)
an exploration of a theme that you observed in one or more of the readings
a discussion of something in the readings that excited, confused, surprised or offended you

It's good to share personal experiences when these are relevant; but try to avoid purely personal reflections -- your thoughts should connect to the reading in a clear way, using quotations if possible.

You should contribute to the on-line discussion every week, if it all possible. There may be a week or two in which the readings don't connect very well with your interests (we can't all be intrested in everything), so there will not be any penalty for not posting in a given week. Your contributions will be graded at the end of the semester based on a portfolio that you will construct using all your notes. The portfolio will take the form of another Knowledge Forum note that explains in a narrative form how your work in Knowledge Forum over the semester matches the criteria below.

Your portfolio of contributions to the on-line discussions will be graded according to the following scheme:

A+	There is evidence that you've engaged actively in helping advance not only your own understanding of the material and the field, but that of others in the class as well.
A	Your notes are thoughtful, well-written and coherent; showing evidence of having read the assigned texts carefully and worked the ideas over. Your portfolio documents advances in your own understanding of the field.
B	Your portfolio reflects somewhat hasty or incomplete reading, limited thought, or little effort to communicate ideas clearly. Your weekly contributions may consist substantially of summaries of the assigned text, or personal ideas that don't connect clearly to the ideas in the readings.
C	Your portfolio does not reflect consistent effort to engage in undertanding of the material. Many weekly contributions are missing, or are incomprehensible to the instructor.

Please use only plain text in your on-line contributions (no special formatting such as bold, underline, etc.), and no file attachments (these can cause trouble if other students use a different word processor from you).

"Tradition" paper

Your major assignment for the course will be an 8-page paper that explores in depth one of the traditions of research and development on the syllabus. Each tradition is associated with a particular kind of technology for learning (e.g. LOGO, Cognitive Tutors), but equally important is the set of ideas about learning that motivated the researchers to design the technology they did, and that shape its use and evaluation.

There is a lot to know about each of these traditions that we will not have time to cover in class, and you will get to choose which tradition is of greatest interest to you personally. For each tradition I can recommend some additional reading to get you started, but you will also need to spend time in the library and on the Net, finding additional resources yourself.

Your paper is meant to be more than a summary of sources. We've all written enough book reports for one lifetime! Your submission should, instead, offer a reasoned and persuasive view of what you've read and experienced. You can choose any angle you like on the material, but at a minimum, your paper will have to address the following questions, which may not be directly addressed in the resources you collect:

What "big idea" (or ideas) about learning drives this tradition?
What does this tradition assume a valuable learning outcome is?
How do the big ideas behind this tradition differ from those that drive other traditions?
What sort of "track record" does this idea have? Give a brief history of the work done.
Based on this track record, what do you think the future of this tradition will be, or should be?
What general lessons does this tradition offer to educational technologists about doing "good" design?

Note: You may find it useful to explicitly organize your text around these questions (as headings), but this is not required so long as you directly address each question/issue somewhere.

Here is how your grade for the paper will break down:

Description of the tradition and its "big ideas" about learning	20%
Brief history of work done in the tradition	30%
Predictions and/or suggestions for the future	20%
Explanation of general lessons for educational technologists	20%
Overall clarity of presentation, effective use of English, and format requirements met	10%

As you can see, quite a few marks are allocated to speculative portions of the paper, so I am expecting you to think beyond your sources and offer me a coherent argument for your view of the tradtion. The more persuasive I find your argument, the better your grade will be. To ensure that you have a fair chance at the grade you want, you will get an opportunity to test your arguments on me by submitting a draft of your paper part way through the semester. You will receive written feedback on this draft, both from me and your fellow students (see below).

Your final paper should be no more than 8 pages in length (12 point times, single spaced, one inch margins), not counting references. This may not sound like much space to fill; but if you are doing good quality work you should find yourself writing 10 or 15 pages, and having to edit down to fit within the limit. Marks will be deducted if you go over the required length.

For your references, you should use endnotes in APA format. Here is a handy on-line guide to the APA citation format.

Further details on this assignment will be discussed in class, along with this sample paper from last year.

Peer reviews of other students' papers

As the introductory course for our Master's specialization in Education and Technology, this course should help establish a learning community within your cohort. Ultimately, your professors should not be the only ones offering you feedback on your work; you should be able to rely on one another for feedback as well. To this end, when you prepare a draft of your major paper for the course, you will submit copies to two of your fellow students, as well as to me. You will also write two brief, constructive reviews of other students' work, focusing on the most obvious ways in which they can improve their submissions.

Please read this guide to preparing your peer reviews.

Personal Inquiry

While this course is meant mostly to provide a base of knowledge for your future work in the program, I know that every student has personal and professional scholarly interests to explore in relation to Education and Technology. I do not want to make you wait until your second semester in the program to begin doing this. To this end, you will have some structured opportunity in this course to "locate" your professional interests within the literature, in consultation with your peers, your instructor and other professors affiliated with the program. This is your opportunity to do some investigation to resolve (or at least open up) questions such as:

Who in the field has considered questions and problems like those that concern me?
How do they talk about these questions and problems?
What progress has been made on understanding and dealing with these questions and problems?

Your inquiry may have to do with specific technologies (e.g. PowerPoint) or teaching practices (e.g. Problem-based learning), or may be more oriented around ideas (e.g. motivation to learn). Like the "Traditions" paper, this component of your grade will require some independent search of the literature on your part; but you won't be entirely alone. The class will work together on-line and in person to help you get a fix on what interests you, and find at least one or two publications that can serve as resources for you.

Your inquiry will be presented in the form of a short (15-minute) oral presentation to the class. For the presentation you may use any media you wish (PowerPoint, video, etc.) so long as we can provide them in the CET. For very tech-intensive presentations it is a good idea to come in early and test your setup so as not to waste class time troubleshooting.

Three evaluation criteria will be applied to your work:

Connection to the literature

You link your interest to prior published work, so you are beginning to build a sense of who in the field shares your interests and how they talk about them. (It is always preferable to work with peer-reviewed sources, though this is not always possible for every interest. If you have a hard time finding published work, let me know.)

Analytical/Evaluative component

You engage thoughtfully with some of the prior work and begin to assess, or at least understand more deeply, the worth of the technologoies/ideas/practices/ for some population and setting you care about

Forward-looking component

You make predictions or recommendations for the future, and/or sketch out a project or design you might pursue.