VOC2: Self-assessment on how my theme group worked

My group theme: Global and Multicultural Activities (http://ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/)

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 15^th 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 28^th 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 3^rd space which as shared learning space between students?