Week 4 reflections

The week 4 was a little stressful at the level of mental work. There were lot many things going on in the life and I was little tensed for the final paper preparation. I read the guidelines 2-3 times. Initially, when I read it for the first time, it looked a lot of work and then with consecutive readings, it starting making more sense to me. But still there are a lot of things those have to be taken care of while preparing the final paper and then the rubrics!  I have started working on the same and will try to meet the guidelines.

There were many interesting readings, video and the podcast. The podcast had some problem. It stopped after a while but then I could listen the whole lecture. This provides and interesting insight into the universal course design which can be accesses successfully by the major chunk of the population including persons defined as disabled under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These lectures also helped me understand that Universal design and accessibility are not synonymous and clarified any confusion between the two terms.  The course and the design of the web  designed such that it can be accesses by the people with disabilities or without disabilities.

This week also helped in getting understanding of  what is the best way of carrying out assessment -9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning, explains Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve.

While brainstorming on Accessibility issue and my role in team, I thought of taking the role of the content specialist and the technologists. I saw that role has already been taken up by anyone else in my group. I decided that I can still take up the role of a technologist as an assistant to the lead. In that case, I will be able to learn as well as fulfill my desire of playing a role of technologist. 

This week, I acted funny and foolish. In the Forum: 4:4 Assessing Collaborative Projects, I misinterpreted the whole question. I took it to be a general group grading in term of a classroom scenario. Then I realized that this particularly ask about the group work we did  the last week. So, I changed my response.