Week Four--Theories of the Life Course

I. Chapter 4 (Theories of the Life Course) reading from text Learning and Change in the Adult Years with highlights from the chapter:

• Experience, and the ability to reflect upon and learn from that experience, emerges as a key factor in the formation of adult personality and social roles.
• The life course is described in terms of a sequence of stages through which one progresses, at least ideally.
• The identity of adult education as a field of study is largely premised on the identity of the adult.
• Many adult education programs are explicity designed to promote personal change or development, and are geared towards addressing life-span concerns.
• Levinson: Each era has its distinct and unifying character of living. Each transition between eras thus requires a basic change in the character of one's life.
• Gilligan: Terms like separateness, autonomy, and independence are essentially male values and females value relationships and responsibilities, empathy and attachment, and interdependence rather than independence.
• Caffarella and Olson: Interpersonal relationships are extremely important to women's self-concept.

II. Fellow cohort, Kelly Findley and I led a student-directed seminar on this week's topic--here are a couple of questions Kelly proposed and my overall view of how the discussions went:

Question #1:

Gilligan (page 74) states that terms like separateness, autonomy, and independence are essentially male values and relationships and responsibilities, empathy and attachment, and interdependence are female values. Do you agree or disagree with Gilligan’s assessment? Has the advancement of women in leadership roles in what was once considered a “man’s world” changed the descriptive terms used to express women and men values?

This question resulted in a record number of replies, I think! There was plenty of good discussion on the topic, one that with difference between genders being the focus, was understandably controversial.

Question #2:

The text contained a number of theories that depict adult development by using stages and phases to show progression from child to adulthood. Some of these dealt with only male or female subjects while others integrated the two genders. Among the most notable models were: 1) Levinson’s theory regarding the four eras of the life cycle (page 71); 2) Caffarella & Olson’s study of women based on Levinson’s model (page 75); 3) Maslow’s theory of self-actualization (page 85); and 4) Erikson’s theory composed of 8 psychosocial stages (page 88). In your opinion, which approach seems to give the best explanation of adult development and why?

There was a lot of good sharing here, also! Cohorts shared their views on the four theories, which led to lively discussion!

Kelly and I also provided some good internet resources on the topic, which also sparked some good discussion!

III. In response to the reflection questions on the seminar provided in "Leading a Seminar" document provided by our instructor:

• Kelly and I chose good resources and questions to present to the seminar participants! We had a lot of fun planning and leading the seminar!
• I am quite comfortable in a leadership role with my peers. I have gained a lot of confidence in this area over the past year or so, with most of the thanks going to this online program!
• I think the participants enjoyed the discussions on the material we supplied for the seminar and we all learned quite a bit!
• I think the seminar has been an excellent educational tool, and especially on this topic!

Week Three--How to Construct a Rubric

I. Reading for the week--GMIT 660--Chapter Three in Introduction to Rubrics; highlights from the chapter:

• Rubric construction gets easier with time, partly because we get better at it and also because we often find ourselves revising rubrics we created for other, similar assignments.
• Four basic stages are involved in constructing any rubric regardless of the number of people participating: 1) Reflecting; 2) Listing; 3) Grouping and Labeling; 4) Application.
• We reflect not only on the assignment but also on the overall course objectives for this particular class.
• Constructing a rubric requires reflection on our overall class objectives, the assignment itself, its purposes, the task objectives, and students' prior knowledge, as well as our own previous experience with this type of assignment.
• In listing, we ask ourselves what specific learning objectives we hope will be accomplished with the completion of this assignment.
• Lists of learning objectives can vary tremendously, even in classes that seem very similar and that are taught by the same professor.
• Once the learning goals have been listed, you can add a description of the highest level of performance you expect for each learning goal.
• Like the objectives themselves, these descriptions also articulate the individual, disciplinary, and departmental objectives of the class.
• In grouping and labeling, we group similar performance expectations together and create labels for each group.
• Once the performance descriptions are in groups of similar skills, we read them and start to find out what is common across the group and label it.
• In application, we transfer our lists and groupings to a rubric grid.
• We need to be clear about expectations and about failures as well as successes, yet we also try to avoid overly negative or competitive labels.
• Rubrics help us give more feedback, more consistently, with many more opportunities for all students to not only understand but to meet our expectations.

II. Fellow cohort, Rex Coleman had the honor in leading the seminar for this course; his proposed questions and resources along with my view on how things went:

Question #1:

The focus of the entire chapter deals with building a rubric. An easy method to build a rubric is to begin with a template.
Please review the following rubric:
http://styluspub.com/resources/1579221157-otherlink2.doc
Could you use this rubric as a template for a class you are teaching or might teach? Please explain why or why not..

Rex provided us a rubric that was imcomplete and had a very questionable format; he was playing "devil's advocate," as he put it later in the discussion. Obviously, the rubric was imcomplete, but I tried to make the best of what was offered and reflected on the content, which, for the most part made sense to me. Rex's incomplete rubric in question was a good way to eventually get everyone to see that a good rubric is complete with nothing left to interpretation, and has a good, readable format.

Question #2:

The chapter states that there are some questions to be answered prior to designing a rubric.
Beginning on page 30 there are 8 questions. Choose one of the 8 questions to answer, using information from a class you are currently teaching.

If you are not currently teaching, use the group course created last term.

The participants did a good job of selecting a question from the text and applying their thoughts on rubrics planning. The questions ranged from how the teacher plans to accomplish his or her goals, to what skills the students have to have to do well in the assignment.

Question #3:

The chapter briefly discusses the use of student feedback in the process of developing a rubric.
Please refer to a rubric that you are using for a class, and then discuss some of the comments/feedback from your students regarding that rubric. If you are not teaching a course, please comment from the student perspective, on the following rubric: http://styluspub.com/resources/1579221157-otherlink2.doc

There was plenty of lively discussion regarding this question; participants provided good feedback and ideas from existing rubrics used in their field of expertise, as well as giving good feedback to others postings.

Rex also provided us with some good websites and articles related to the topic, which got some good feedback from the participants!

III. My overall reflections on the seminar:

• I thought Rex did a good job of providing good questions, websites, and scholarly articles on the main topic of creating rubrics, as well as keeping the discussions going with good comments.
• I learned a great deal about constructing rubrics from this seminar, as well as from the textbook reading.
• I will refer back to several of the rubrics formats in the future as I move along in my teaching career!
• I participated at a graduate student level in the seminar; I offered a few scholarly articles from EBSCO database on the subject matter and participated with replies to postings that helped move things along.
• This seminar format worked very well as a good educational tool in sharing and learning on the main topic!