Relate, Create, Donate Mary Helen Spear, Bob Spear, Gerard Rwagasana, Marita Oosthuizen MERLOT August, 2004

Relate, Create, Donate  Relate to each other and to content  Create a learning artifact  Donate learning to community Concept proposed by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland

Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education  Encourage student-faculty contact  Encourage cooperation among students  Encourage active learning  Give prompt feedback  Emphasize time on task  Communicate high expectations  Respect diverse talents and ways of learning Chickering and Gamson American Association for Higher Education, 1987

Relate –Cooperation Among Students –Active Learning Students need to make the material their own Education is not the pouring of knowledge into the soul. Rather, education is the result of active study by the learner. The teacher’s sole role is to bring the student to the point of active study. paraphrased from Plato The Republic, 518 c-d

Create  Students should create a learning artifact –Learning outcomes assessment –Time on task –Active Learning –Cooperation Among Students –Respect diverse talents

Create “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.” Chinese Proverb

Donate  Students should donate their knowledge to the community or society. –Service learning –Communicate high expectations

Donating Changes the Audience  Traditional assignment: audience of one teacher  Donate: audience of many – community, WWW

Donating changes student role  From: a person to be judged by professor  To: an expert

Donations Individual or group  Web pages  Workshops  Letters to editor, legislators  Brochures  Class modules

Student Web Pages  Go to to answer the following questions. Be careful with your spelling! Question 1 Arthur sleeps all the time even when he would rather be awake. He just can't help it. He probably has __________ For 2 points Question 2 Sam has gained a lot of weight in the last several years and also has begun to snore very loudly at night. In addition, he sometimes seem to stop breathing completely when he is asleep which his wife finds frightening. When Sam wakes up in the morning he does not feel well rested but is still tired. Sam might be suffering from ___________ For 2 points

Workshops  Students develop a workshop/class on a topic  Students present the best workshops to: –Church groups –Work groups –Scouts –PTA’s –Military groups  Students verify presentation with letters and evaluations

From a Student workshop : What is Discipline?  Teaching vs..... Punishing - what’s the difference  Setting Realistic expectations  How does personality relate to how and why we discipline  Anger - yours and your child’s  4 Keys to effective discipline

Teaching vs..... Punishing  To teach is to give knowledge and train someone such that they will be able to do that behavior again on their own  To punish is to cause suffering or unpleasantness to someone who has done something wrong When you discipline, are you aiming to teach or to punish?

Expectations  Developmentally appropriate expectations allow children to have attainable goals  How do we identify appropriate expectations… –evaluate your child’s age, development, and personality –identify specific behaviors which you deem necessary and attainable by your child –Remember to reevaluate… are they disobeying you or is your expectation unrealistic at this age handout: Expectations

Active Citizens Decide what you think about having an earlier start to the school day for high school students. As a taxpayer are you willing to pay the higher costs that mostly likely will result from such changes? Assignment: Write a well thought out letter to your local school board stating your position on this issue and encouraging them to support your position. You will need to:  Get the name and address of your local school board representative  Write a clear letter with supportive arguments (beyond information in the Washington Post)  Document your sources of information in the letter  Submit a copy to me and submit a copy to Turnitin.com

PSA Brochures  Have students create tri-fold brochures –Department –College offices

Class modules or materials  Case studies  Models  Videos  Web pages

More ideas?

Computer Literacy Materials for Rwanda  Sophomore computer literacy class at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland (UMD)  A small part of the $3M USAID-funded Partnership Project between UMD and the National University of Rwanda (NUR)

Project Components  Participants: Bob Spear’s Fall 2002 class of 240 students in BMGT 201  Target audience: Teachers and students at NUR  45 four-person content teams  3 content teams assigned to each of 15 topics in MS Windows and Office  Each content team created webpages and PowerPoint presentations to teach their topic

Project Components (cont.)  Quality Control team  Technical Support team  Best submission for each topic was included on the CD.  3 native-French speakers translated the PowerPoint presentations into French.  First CD’s delivered to the NUR December 2002.

ALO Project Components  Prince George’s Community College (PGCC)/NUR project was funded by ALO in January  In Spring 2003, Bob’s BMGT 201 class continued development of student exercises and exam materials to add to the CD, and refinement of the previous CD.  CD’s delivered to the NUR in June Further enhancements made in 2003/2004. Final version was delivered in June  Materials posted in MERLOT in 2003, updated in 2004.

Intro to MS Office demo  Search in MERLOT for “Spear Office”  Link to the webpages on PGCC’s server: ffice/AUTptn/index.htm  Link to download the entire package: ffice/AUTOptn/package.exe ffice/AUTOptn/package.exe

PGCC/NUR Partnership Project (the ALO Project)  Objective: Computer literacy training for 1440 secondary school teachers in Rwanda (17% of all secondary schools)  Three-week computer literacy workshop at the NUR for 36 master teacher-trainers in 2003, repeated in 2004  CD contains webpages in English, PowerPoints in English and French, and a lab manual in French.  Each master teacher-trainer takes 20 copies of the CD to train the other teachers in their home school. Receives a stipend when the 10-week follow-on training is completed.

Project images  Computer Literacy Workshop  Rwanda TV  Visiting secondary schools  Follow on project proposals

Using the “Intro MS Office” CD in South Africa

Relationship to MERLOT  The Relate-Create-Donate model is an excellent pedagogical model for the creation of digital content and for the rapid expansion of open-access materials through MERLOT.

Donations Individual or group  Web pages  Workshops  Letters to editor, legislators  Brochures  Class modules  ?

Thank You!  Contact info:  Bob Spear:  Mary Helen Spear:  Gerard Rwagasana:  Marita Oosthuizen: