The most interesting and productive assignment which made me think the most was discussing what content should be part of SWC and at what levels. I think this could be a much larger discussion and I was sorry that when we came together as a group we didn’t have more time. This discussion is done best in person (rather than over email). Working with my group with all of us coming from very different backgrounds and therefore perspectives really made me think about assumptions I brought to the class based on my programming experience.
I also learned a lot from reading Mark Guzdial blog, however, there was a lot of information that I could have skipped. Having a more focused assignment of a few important posts (and maybe investigating the sources further) I think would have conveyed the same message. I was especially interested in the gender issues raised, that would have been a good discussion to have as well.
One of the biggest benefits was exposure to who these people are who are posting to the mailing list. I can now picture some of you and have a little sense of your background.
Ideas for improvement:
- More feedback. I think this last video post is the first post I’ve gotten any comments on. I find it demotivating to put together a post and not get any feedback on it.
- I would have loved to have more discussions specifically on teaching, how to teach, what to teach, and issues that teachers encounter, specifically teaching computing or even more specifically SWC.
- A tour of the materials available to SWC instructors.
- More group work — even though this is tough to coordinate, you get to learn more about the people in your class and get more perspectives on different ideas.
- Having a clear plan for the assignments or clear guide to this is a skill or lesson that we are working on this session and this is how it relates to your teaching.