Unit Notes - FDWO Week 2: The Deep Dive

Unit 5 is about bringing the course to a close, inviting participants to do a final reflection and make concrete plans for next steps.

The mini-session this week is:

• Assessing Participation - this mini-session is introduced as an individual activity at the beginning (people choose or create a rubric with which to assess their own participation), and brought to a close at the end by a participant facilitator (or pair). This tends to be a "lighter" mini-session, and so is a good one to assign to someone who may be less comfortable with technology, but has good teaching experience, and perhaps has expressed an interest in assessment. Often the mini-session takes the form of a debate (i.e, "should online participation be assessed?" or similar question). The key struggle in this topic is developing a balanced approach - one that encourages quality contributions, and isn't too onerous for instructors to assess. One challenge for facilitators of this mini-session is people are tired, and they have to manage time carefully because the course ends on Friday - no additional weekend.

Please go to the ISWO Sandbox and review the BackPocket Strategy for this activity to remind you of the details, learning outcomes, and suggested approaches.  This, combined with your own experience, may "twig" other ideas that you could add to the backpocket strategies and suggest to your participants.