How did I manage during the task? How did others manage in my group?
Our group have managed very well group activities done
for creating a leaning environment for the theme of Global and Multicultural
Activities, though it was very challenging all the way. At the beginning of the
planning phase, I had to research a lot of books and on-line materials related
to our cultural topic. It was time for my own education and also try to find
good sources of teaching contents and method for our own use. At that point,
our decision for the contents were only two items, one from Anne’s dissertation
and other one from Milton Bennett’s Intercultural Sensitivity which from Virpi’s
optional course taken from University of Jyväskylä. Anne’s dissertation helped
me to understand what kind of level and scope of cultural aspects would be
appropriate for our teaching plan. However, it was not enough to cover the all
the core questions of our topic. I
reminded them to gaps in our scope and level of contents, which were tended to
be focused on higher-education student in academic university. My intention was
to bring more tasks to handle practical issues and covering all other core
questions given to our topic. And I have created the blog for our teaching
environment (http://ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/ ) and draft version of execution plan.
When we had first group call via Skype, I introduced my proposals to add
more activities to our teaching plan and all that were accepted, as below:
1.1 Art
Appreciation Exercise using Paul Gauguin’s painting
2.2 Watch the video: Raising Intercultural awareness
2.3 Survey of the Cultural Competence
Self-assessment
3.1. Describe your school's
international activities at Padlet wall
3.2. Create a plan to enhance your own
and/or your students’ internationalization
We had done actively group discussions via email to enhance the teaching
plan with a focus on practical and diverse learning perspective. Timo was very
good in analyzing the tasks in student perspective. When we divide the ownership of the tasks in
the Execution Plan, I gave the ownership of the activity 3.1 and 3.2 to our team
members, so that they could feel fairness and motivation for our group
collaboration.
Finalizing the teaching environment and revising the execution plan before
the 15th of January, was causing too much hard work for me. Because,
although we have 4 members, most of contributions to build contents were from
Virpi and me. As usual in most case of VOC modules, I took the roles of
specialist and completer in this group dynamics. Virpi is also an excellent collaborator
and a good team worker supporting me very well and carried out her own parts of
activities.
How would I now change things? In which areas did we excel?
After the deadline of learning activities were ended by 28th
Feb, I addressed the evaluation criteria to our team which was not planned
before. Meanwhile I have completed Global Education course, learned and
practiced about lesson plan and teaching methods for topics like intercultural
competence and sustainability. It gave me insight of how to evaluate student
outcomes. However, my group it was not so appreciated because it was not
planned and requires extra effort. Our communication regarding assessment
method was we will give Pass for those who write half a page of reflective
essays. It means that we are not evaluating any level of student learning
process and how much they internalize the learning objectives. When I have
tried using the criteria, it took so much time to evaluate one person, due to
we have 8 activities to be evaluated per person. It seems that it is not realistic to evaluate
vast amount of writings according to the rubric at this late of stage.
Now I have learned that clear set of assessment should be included in the
beginning stage of the planning of lessons and aligned with the all the
activities. And workload for the assessment should be estimated, if it is too
high then find some other easier way.
I would like to consider following assessment
guideline for the future lesson plan in Global education contexts:
· “The whole is greater than the sum of
its parts” – applying the holism approach
· How does
student integrate the intercultural elements into their thoughts and belief?
· How they have
demonstrated intercultural competence throughout the tasks?
· How much of
progress or changes have made during the course of tasks? Which task triggers
the leap of their development or change of view, if there are?
· Have they
created any 3rd space which as shared learning space between
students?
