Final Reflection on Learning by Design

Contemplating Understanding by Design over coffee….
UbD is a common sense approach to any project---whether you’re planning a wedding, a curriculum unit or you planning to build a shopping center. The process of UbD/backward mapping is a valuable tool.

I had a hard time initially wrapping my brain around the text, but that’s because I started reading the book thinking only k-12 and since I have no experience in k-12 I naturally couldn’t relate to the reading. Once, I put aside that idea and thought about k-12, and thought about UbD and it’s implications in other parts of my work, it started to make sense.

If you take the UbD template and use it as a project management tool, it’s a guideline:
Stage 1 – Desired Result – Essential Questions > gaining understanding of participants in the overall project goal is critical.
Stage 2 –Assessment Evidence > Designing evaluative Cycles - calibrating members understanding and progress
Stage 3- Learning Plan > the actual project design – the work flow.

Similar to the classroom, the workplace has a diversity of learners (understanding). In project planning or workflow design, the models of differentiated instruction can also be applied. Identifying and understanding each team member’s strength in creating workgroups assures productivity. It also allows a project manager to design the project in a way that clearly communicates the goal, structure and timeline. Simple example, if Jack doesn’t pay attention to emails or work well with text, it’s a given that after a memo, email or project timeline is sent, that his supervisor may then pull jack and verbally communicate those expectations.

Eureka!
UbD = action research- Hypothesis -> lit review -> cycles, research, assessment -> results

5 Things I learned from my mentoring experience

1. Mentoring is a powerful tool to build connections; personal or professional. Consciously building mentoring relationship is something that I will take with me from this point forward. I’ve been fortunate enough to have met or worked with some incredibly gifted people. I plan to take advantage of those opportunities and turn some of those into mentoring relationships. "Those who seek mentoring, will rule the great expanse under heaven" Tao Mentoring, Huang and Lynch 1995.

2. I have it within me to be a mentor. To build a relationship on a level that allows me to be the expert without the traditional hierarchal boundaries.


3. I’ve been here before, just never thought about it as mentoring, or given it a structure. This course and the text assignment helped me understand the process in a way that I can now create “mindful” learning as I engage in the mentoring relationship. In this way I come from a place of consciousness where as I build the mentoring relationship, I value my mentee and I value and recognize my own learning in the relationship.

4. It takes a lot of work to maintain the relationship. Scheduling, following up, and thinking about the relationship continuously, being present not just during your time together, but being present means being in the relationship wholeheartedly.


5. Listen, Listen, listen unconditionally

4/7 – In your current professional environment, how are educational experiences or program assessed? Is the evidence collected from the assessment use

At the Graduate school that I was employed, the program is assessed through the WASC accreditation and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) accreditation. The university responds to standards by those accrediting agencies. The standards set by those agencies are valid and research based, but given the fact that those reviews are generally every five years, the process is lacking. Assessment should be continuous, similar to action research. I can’t say absolutely that’s not happening, since at the level that I work, perhaps I am not privy to it…but then again, if it were truly intensive, we (all) would be part of the assessment process. There then, is the weakness in the “assessment”, lack of participation from all members of the CoP.

Student learning assessment is generally done through the traditional route, test, papers, and projects. This year our teacher education students will be required to complete a series of assessment referred to by the CCTC as TPA's (Teacher Performance Assessment). TPA's are a series of activities in which the teacher candidate demonstrates their competencies of curriculum design. Candidates writes a lesson demonstrating their skills a differentiating instruction, they then tape themselves delivering that lesson in their student teaching assignment. TPA's have a lot of strengths. Since it's a structured model, it calibrates teacher preparation programs, assuring that all programs meet a minimum standard in teacher preparation. TPA's or the PACT model are designed and based on research. Built in to both models are a continuous process of evaluation and res-design. This force, programs to do continuous evaluation and self study.