Having Faculty Learning Communities will provide a variety of perspectives from differing disciplines. Since I was used to standard content based assessments the benefit of outside knowledge did not seem particularly useful to me due to their lack of expertise. But outcomes-based assessments are much more transient and universal instead of pockets of expert knowledge. In many ways our classroom is a FLC but in a classroom setting. I plan to leverage the experiences and opinions of our class to discuss how to transition into outcomes-based assessments. In future practice I will consult with instructors not only within my own discipline but across the entire university.
In a procedural fashion, after the initiative to foster FLCs and deep discussion into outcomes-based assessment is decided, establishing the ensuing attitudes into the culture of the university is the next integral step to developing outcomes-based assessments. Empowerment, Iterative Learning, and Safety are the necessary cultural qualities in addition to the aforementioned collaboration/communication. By giving teachers ownership of their own class’s construction and growth, they gain a sense of empowerment which directly affects motivation. The correlation between empowerment and motivation is not education specific, yet it seems to be forgotten in the context of teachers and education. This is vital in the transition from teaching being a “duty” and becoming a passion.
The concept of iterative learning was best described in the text as a learning paradigm in contrast to the standard teaching paradigm. The teacher’s focus should not be in “teaching” which tends to connote a more one-way transference of knowledge. In a learning paradigm the teacher can take on the role of a learner as well and the classroom becomes a cyclic progression of the teacher proposing subject matter and the class (teacher included) flesh out the topic to draw their own conclusions with guidance from the teacher. I’ve recently experimented with this style in my Applied IT Programming class that I teach. Instead of “lecturing” with a singular in-class exercise that attempts to capture the concepts in the class, I have implemented more of a learning paradigm where students take turns writing code and the rest critique and praise. Not only is the learning much more active, by having the students write the code their common mistakes surface (something that would not happen with an expert practitioner writing the code) and they can be immediately addressed.
This activity leads into the third tenant of safety which is an intentional byproduct of the learning style. I prefaced the exercise telling the students they WILL make mistakes; however, mistakes are part of learning. Each student brings their own perspective on the code and with different people working on a collective document we get to see the differing styles. This is continually praised in the class and throughout the duration of the class I saw a steadily forming sense of safety where students shed their inhibitions and began volunteering more confidently knowing they were entering a process, and not just an single activity. After-all, mistakes are where learning is done, so without mistakes how can true learning happen?
These chapters helped frame the context in which I wanted to structure my new classes and I am confident the following chapters will help evolve this style much in the iterative process that is advocated.