Designing Teaching for Understanding

A WebQuest for College, Adult
Teacher Preparation

Introduction

This WebQuest is developed as part of a master's program assignment at SDSU. It focuses on student teachers discovery what a course that teaches for understanding should look like.

In this 5-class course, the instructor will select four example courses from various disciplines. Students will analyze, compare, contrast, and discuss with each other. They will then form an opinion, rank the order, using the given criteria.

Learners

This WebQuest is anchored in teacher college instructional strategies and involves content pedagogy, and assessment to a lesser extent. This WebQuest could easily be incorporated into a larger unit in a teacher preparation course.

Before beginning this WebQuest, learners should have basic concepts about Teaching for Understanding theory, a five-year research program designed to develop and test pedagogy of understanding. In addition, they should have basic Internet surfing skills and familiar with document creating skills in Microsoft Word.

Curriculum Standards

Principle 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8 of Core Standards (INTASC, 1992) for new teacher assessment and support are used to guide the formulation of tasks in this WebQuest:

INTASC Core Standards	WebQuest Application
Content Pedagogy	Learners will review the framework, central concepts, and course design guides of TfU pedagogy they learned in other course and learn how to make content meaningful to their students from the activities.
Instructional Strategies	Learners will compare and contrast various instructional strategies in the activity and learn strategies that can encourage their students’ development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Motivation and Behavior	Learners will observe methods for creating group motivation from the task-based webquest activities. By participating in group activity, learners will also experience how positive social interaction affects active engagement in learning.
Communication	Learners will collaborate and interact in small group during the activity; moreover, they will structure, synthesize, and demonstrate their opinions with verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques.
Assessment	Learners will analyze the use of formal and informal assessment strategies in the activities.

Process

You can paste in the process description given to students on the student page and then interleave the additional details that a teacher might need.

Step 1: Preparing yourself with knowledge
In this step, students review TfU framework and major concepts. The instructor could provide on time feedback or threaded inquiries to guide learners go through the review process.

Step 2: Investigating the sites
During this step, learners are working individually. The instructor could arrange short intermediate reflection not only for learners to share their findings but also for instructor to correct learners' misconcepts that might expose.

Step 3: Taking individual stand
In this step, learners make their choice for the best and the worst TfU course from the perspective of his or her role. The instructor might want to remind learners: Always pay attention to main concepts and characteristics of TfU.

Step 4: Taking group stand
Here learners conduct a lot of teamwork. They will discuss, compare, argue, analyze, rank the order, and make choice of the team. The instructor might want to emphasize on civil disagreement skills so that group discussion will proceed smoothly and effectively.

Step 5: Demonstrating your judgment
This is the culminating performance for the WebQuest. Main argument, reasoning, pursuading, and judgment will occur here. The instructor could provide information about how to conduct a successful presentation; however, major focus should be paid to analyze and appreciate the instructional strategies, content pedagogy, and assessments presented by candidate courses as well as how learners will apply what they learned to their teaching.

Time Allocation

This WebQuest will take more than one class hour. Suggested time allocation is:

Class 1: Review the theory
Class 2: Individual investigating
Class 3: Group discussion
Class 4 and 5: Presentation, debating, and judgment

Grouping

There are several issues that instructors will want to consider while grouping learners into small teams (Barkley, Cross, & Major, 2005):

Size. Research suggests that two to six members is the general rule
Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous grouping.
Instructor-selected vs. student-selected vs. random selected.

Variations

This WebQuest could be used as a culminating performance or formative assessment in pedagogy courses for pre-service teacher.

Resources Needed

Following resources are needed:

Teaching for Understanding Overview
http://www.pz.harvard.edu/Research/TfU.htm
What’s the Teaching for Understanding Framework http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ALPS/tfu/info3.cfm
Teaching for Understanding Guide http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au/proflearn/transpract/processes.htm
The Art of Civil Disagreement Online http://projects.aadlcolab.org/fipse-publicweb/SCOs/Module14/SCO1403/index.htm
Creating an Effective PowerPoint Presentation http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/powerpoint.html

Moderating online or on-campus group learning is critical to success in this WebQuest. Referemce materials can be found at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~lulee/susan561/eet_work/Articles/group_process/index.htm

Evaluation

Learner performances are suggested to be checked on multiple points, in multiple ways, by multiple assessors because of diverse learning styles. Some learners performs badly in text examination might perform well in hands-on practice. To evaluate learners through single assessment by single assessor - the instructor might loose the opportunity for discovering potential intelligence of certain learner.

Multiple checking points: knowledge building, discussion, teamwork, and etc.
Multiple assessors: instructor, peers, and learner self-assessment.

Following table delineates the sample rubric for culminating performance. Different check point will need to create different rubrics.

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1	Score
Make Judgment Based on TfU Theory	The team clearly understood TfU framework in-depth and make their judgment strictly based on the theory.	The team clearly understood TfU framework in-depth and make most of their judgment based on the theory.	The team seemed to understand the main points of TfU framework and use it to make judgment with ease.	The team did not show an adequate understanding of the TfU framework.
Use of Worksheet	Every major item in the worksheet was well recorded with several relevant facts, statistics and/or examples.	Every major item in the worksheet was adequately recorded with relevant facts, statistics and/or examples.	Every major item in the worksheet was recorded with facts, statistics and/or examples, but the relevance of some was questionable.	Many major items in the worksheet were not recorded.
Teamwork & Communication	Team members act very well in playing assigned roles; perform very good teamwork; and all counter-arguments were accurate, relevant and strong.	Team members act well in playing assigned roles; perform nicely in teamwork; and most counter-arguments were accurate, relevant, and strong.	Team members play their assigned roles properly; mostly, do not work as a team; and most counter-arguments were accurate and relevant, but several were weak.	Team members work individually; ignore their assigned roles; and counter-arguments were not accurate and/or relevant
Final Presentation	All arguments were clearly tied to TfU framework and organized in a tight, logical fashion.	Most arguments were clearly tied to TfU framework and organized in a tight, logical fashion.	All arguments were clearly tied to TfU framework but the organization was sometimes not clear or logical.	Most arguments were not clearly tied to TfU framework.

Conclusion

Research told us, adult learners will want to understand the fuctional utility of investing time and mental energy in learning something. (Sticht, 1997) This WebQuest emphasizes on participation in audlt education so that student teachers could learn from functional context and would transfer knowledge learned to new settings easier and faster.

Credits & References

Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. (1992). Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing, Assessment and Development: A Resource for State Dialogue. Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/corestrd.pdf

Sticht, T. (1997). Context Education - Making Learning Relevant. Montreal: San Diego Consortium for Workforce Education and Lifelong Learning.

Last updated on August 4, 2007. Based on a template from
The WebQuest Page and the Design Patterns

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