UIC-CC Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher
Preparation
The following outline provides you with some of the key issues to cover within your report. In addition to the outline, we also have a more detailed set of guidelines that can be used to help you determine some of the detail with which to think about your change project.
A.
Specifics of the project
UIC-CC Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher
Preparation
The following guidelines provide you with some of the key issues to cover within your report. We recognize that every participant in Collaborative Institutes has a different change project and a different story to tell and, therefore, not all categories and questions in our guidelines may pertain to you. There may also be issues that you want to raise that we have not included in these guidelines. However, the issues raised in these guidelines are relevant to most projects. We encourage you to use them to report your experiences with a rich level of detail and self-reflection. Doing so should provide you with the opportunity to think deeply about your experiences and gain ideas on how you can shape future courses.
This report is a rich description of the change
project you implemented in your target course(s) and its results. Include the following information:
A. Specifics of
the project:
What kinds of changes did you
plan to make in the target course(s) in terms of content taught and/or the
pedagogical approaches you used? Write
about your preliminary plan that you made throughout the Collaborative
Institute.
¨
Richly describe
what you planned to do and why you planned to do it that way. Be specific.
·
what kind of new
activities would you have students do in class
·
what kind of new
assignments would you make
·
what kind of new
ways of presenting materials would you try
·
what kind of new
ways would you interact with students
·
what kind of new
ways would you try to assess the success of your teaching efforts
·
what kind of new ways
would you try to assess what you students learned or struggled with
·
what new content
would you add to the class
·
what materials
would you introduce to students in a different way and how
·
what new ways
would you grade students and/or give them ungraded feedback
¨
How much of the
targeted course would be impacted by your change plan?
·
the whole
semester
·
one unit. Describe
it
·
one lesson.
Describe it
¨
What did you
think the change project was going to result in?
·
If the project
worked perfectly, what would have happened?
·
How would you
have known that it worked perfectly?
·
How would the
result have solved the problem(s) you detailed above?
[This kind of description is important for the reader who wants to understand you, your students, and your change plan. This section and the next can orient you to the choices you made regarding how you wanted to teach differently compared to past experiences.]
In what course did you
implement the change project you designed as part of the Collaborative
Institute?
¨
Name of course(s)
and when taught with the change project
¨
Basic
characteristics of the targeted course in which you did your change project
·
meeting times per
week
·
students in the
course
·
course prerequisites
·
syllabus
¨
How the course
was taught in semesters past, before you tried change project
·
meeting times per
week
·
students in the
course
·
course
prerequisites
·
syllabi from
earlier semesters
·
general content
covered
·
general ways
classes were run
·
general types of
exercises students assigned
·
general grading
[This section can help focus you and the reader on why you wanted to undertake a change project and on what you chose to focus.]
What difficulties arose in
your target course in past semesters that you hoped to address with your change
project. Or
what difficulties do you suspect may arise in the target course if this will be
the first time taught.
¨
Describe the
problem in detail and consider to what extent the problem is related to one or
more of the following:
·
how students grow
in their understanding of course contents
·
how students grow
in their interest of the subject
·
how you interact
with students in and out of the class
·
how students
interact with each other
·
the teaching
abilities and tools you bring to the course
·
the prior
understanding and background your students bring to the course
·
other problems
¨
How you become
aware of this problem
·
when did you
start to see this as a problem
·
what evidence was
there
·
student performance, what type?
·
class discussion
·
homework
·
quizzes or tests
·
overall grades
·
future success in
other courses
·
student behavior
in class
·
discussion with
students, formally or informally
·
student
evaluations of the course
·
your feelings
about the teaching process
·
discussion with
other faculty at your college
·
enrollment
·
discussion with
participants at the Collaborative Institute
[This section can provide valuable information about the “process” of change. There is great complexity in teaching and learning and in the type of project you tried. It is important to understand the unintentional results as well as the intentional. ]
Given the problem you tried
to solve and the change plan you made, what actually happened when you tried to
implement this ‘in the real world’ of your course?
¨
What did you
actually do as part of your change plan?
·
Look at the plan
you described above and note how the change project you actually implemented
differed.
·
Why did the
project differ from what you originally planned?
¨
What happened
when you tried various parts of your project?
·
How did students
behave? What did they say or do in
class?
·
How did students
engage intellectually with the content?
·
How did students
perform academically?
·
How did you
behave? How did you feel?
·
What was the most
difficult part of the project for you?
What was easiest?
¨
What evidence is
there that it happened this way?
·
What did you
·
see or hear
·
collect in
writing
·
student work on
assignments or exams
·
student surveys
·
student journals
·
your notes or
journal
·
analyze
·
the depth of
understanding students show when they work a problem m
·
the improvement
in grades on a pre- to a post-test
·
Did you record
this evidence and if so, how
·
If you recorded t
he evidence, attach it (or a sample) to the final report
¨
For each thing
that you mention happening above, why did it happen related to
·
Your change plan
activity
·
Other influences
on students or you
As you undertook the change
project, what people, experiences, materials, and contexts helped or hindered
you? Give details.
¨
Supports
·
Student reaction
to the class
·
Policies guiding
how you teach
·
Availability of
materials
·
Other faculty and
administrators at your college
·
Other colleagues
elsewhere
·
Other
¨
Challenges
·
Student reaction
to the class
·
Policies guiding
how you teach
·
Availability of
materials
·
Other faculty and
administrators at your college
·
Other colleagues
elsewhere
·
Other
¨
What kinds of support
or challenges did you get from the Collaborative Institute?
¨
What kinds of
additional support do you feel you needed?
·
From the
Collaborative
·
From others
[This section orients us to the underlying reason for why we are looking so deeply at what happens in the classroom: we want students to learn. While it is very important to make sense of your own teaching, the bottom line is what students learn. ]
Include your evaluation of
your students’ learning of subject matter in the course(s) in which you
conducted your change project.
¨
Though you may
have included this in parts of the report above, be specific here about what
your students learned in the course and how this might have been impacted by
your change project.
¨
What overall
lessons did you learn from your experience in the Collaborative Institute and
as you did your change project?
¨
What issues
continue to concern you?
¨
What questions
would you like answers to?
¨
What kinds of
support would you like in the future?
¨
Do you have plans
for continuing to pursue new ways of shaping your courses in ways related to
your experience in the Collaborative Institute?