Assignment 1
You are to submit a couple of paragraphs which describe the course you are planning to teach and the audience for which it is intended. Describe any ways you will plan to address the various learning styles and intelligences of your students and/or make an argument for why this may not be necessary.
Points to be assigned as follows:
Description of course and audience: 0-5 points
Specific ideas for meeting the learning styles and intelligence of students: 0-7 points
Professional level, clear writing: 0-3 points
ABC’s of Chemistry: Chemistry on fingertips
Introduction: A general Chemistry course is a prerequisite sequence for students in a variety of science and health-related fields including pharmacy, chemical, biological and environmental engineering, exercise, nutrition, nursing and natural resources. There is a strong need to introduce online interdisciplinary courses so that, students can earn the required college credits saving time, money, and resources. Other online chemistry courses offer general chemistry and organic chemistry as two separate courses. But the course ABC’s of Chemistry: Chemistry on fingertips will serve as one for these two courses. This course is designed to help students learn basic concepts in chemistry entirely online and will be delivered through the university extension program utilizing the Blackboard learning system. This asynchronous and instructor led eight-week long course would help learners to learn a new skill or enhance the existing ones. Learners are expected to spend roughly six to seven hours each week to complete two course lessons, released every Tuesday and Friday. In order to monitor the progress of students in meeting course objectives and professional standards, classroom participation in discussion forum, assignments and final self-reflection using evaluation tools (rubrics) will be used. Each lesson has an assignment at the end.
Target Audience and pre-requisites: This course will attract leaners who are interested in learning that can be done at home and fitted around work, family, and social obligations. The high school juniors and seniors, looking for a jump start on taking college courses, will find this course extremely useful. This is also a bridge course for refreshing the students who wish to pursue for a degree in Chemistry. This is an excellent college prep course and requires a solid foundation in 10th grade level of reading and math.
Course content: In this Chemistry course, learners will gain an understanding of origin of chemistry, explore the nature of matter and analyze the properties of liquids, solids, and gasses. Learners will be introduced to atomic structure, quantum theory and chemical bonding. They will further examine the concept of solutions, solubility, and the colligative properties of solutions; chemical reactions, and chemical periodicity. But that’s not all: learners will also study organic chemistry, laws of thermodynamics, and even electrochemistry. ABC’s of Chemistry is transferable for 3-credits. In this course learners can be certain of quality instruction, personalized assessment, and tracked progress.
Plans for meeting the learning styles and intelligence of students
In an online course the instructor can have learners with different learning styles and multiple intelligences. Thus, it becomes important that the instructors adequately invest time in preparing and structuring course material, assignments and other tasks. One of the biggest advantages of the online environment is that a learner centered course material can be designed to match individuals’ learning styles. The constructivist model recognizes learners as active individuals, constructing knowledge as a result of a variety of interactions: learner-text; instructor-learner; learner-learner, etc.
The aim of this course is to provide an optimal and user-friendly format for students with differing intelligence and learning styles. Thus, the course will reach more students effectively because it would provide access to a larger variety of quality resource, teaching important concepts in multiple ways. Assessment criteria would be such that it would let students use their stronger intelligences.
For visual learners- The course will contain videos, interactive flash tutors, activities with fall back scaffolding, virtual labs, pictures, tables, demonstrations, handouts, and mind maps.
Auditory learners: The students who learn best through hearing (aurally) will find video clips, virtual lectures, interviews, seminars, giving of reports and speeches, power point w/audio component and video conferences useful.
Tactile and kinesthetic learners- Learners will have the virtual lab using drag and drop technology, some interactive flash animations and 3D graphics. Discussion boards and collaborative learning will help them build the community and give them real world experience. I also plan to use some kind of haptic technology.
Assessment: Various learning styles and MI will be taken into account while designing exercises for assessment. The exercises will include fill in the blank, multiple-choice questions, identification of terms, variety of short answer and essay questions, diagrams, flow charts, drag and drop exercises, writing assignments and self-reflection. Peer editing, where students examine each other’s work and reflect upon their own learning, will be an integrated part of the course.
References:
1. Levenburg, N. Implementing the Constructivist Learning Environment. Mini lecture 5, EDUI6701.
2. Bravemann, S. (2004, December). Two, Four, Six, Eight, Let’s All Differentiate
Differential Education: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. New Horizons for Learning Retrieved June 29, 2006, from http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/differentiated/bravmann.htm
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