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Objectives for this Activity: (as
presented to students before activity or in syllabus)
After completing the readings and assignments in this modules, participants
will
- understand intellectual property agreements through active analysis
and evaluation of a given situation and
- continue to develop an appreciation of the varying viewpoints
as determined by addressing a minimum of 80% of the point requirements
delineated by the activity rubric and actively participating in discussion. |
Prerequisites for this Activity: (not necessarily presented
to students)
Student should complete the readings for the section prior to beginning
the discussion. Background knowledge appropriate to the question must be
presented.
Materials and Resources:
What needs to be prepared in advance by the teacher? - The instructor should
have all discussion questions prepared ahead of time. Furthermore, a
rubric for grading the activity based upon potential student answers should
be developed.
What does the student need to bring to the lesson? - Complete prior readings.
Guiding Questions for this Activity: (not presented directly
to students but a question that should be addressed in the readings)
Who owns what and when concerning faculty or staff developed online learning
materials?
Activity as Presented to Students: (usually in conjunction with the asynchronous
discussion forum)
 Hypotheticals Assignment
Show me what you know
As you can see from the previous discussions, many issues are involved
when trying to decide where ownership should fall with regards to online
materials. Furthermore, the policies of various institutions do not
follow a set line of reasoning. Sometimes they are strict with the
University taking control of most instructor materials and other times
they are very loose. In some cases, a written policy may not even exist.
What we want to do next is consider some hypothetical cases that bring
out the issues. The purpose of these hypotheticals is to spawn active
communication among the group on all of the issues to enable everyone
to see arguments more clearly and from various viewpoints. For that
reason, I have kept the information in the hypotheticals to a minimum.
Instead, in your response, analyze what has been given and give the
questions that would still need to be asked in order to fully grasp
the situation. Each student will be given a single hypothetical on
which to comment. These comments can be concise, but should address
the major issues that you feel are important in determining what the
faculty and/or administration should do in the given situation. The
answers are to be posted / presented in the Discussion Forum herein.
Each hypothetical will have its own folder. The assignment of a single
hypothetical to each student will be done the week of the assignment.
Everyone will have 3 days to complete the assignment. Then, a 3 day
period will be given in which to constructively comment on three other
students' answers to hypotheticals other than the one to which you
gave an answer.
Hypothetical assignments can then be given to the students as a table
following the above statement, through email, in announcements, in
the discussion forum along with the actual questions, or whatever standard
method of assignment has been developed in the course.
Then, within the discussion forum, the following question is posed
with the hypothetical header so that all discussion on the given hypothetical
will be in a single easy to identify thread.
Hypothetical #1: Your school is planning to unveil
a new plan for future development of a computer based learning center
in which courses in the psychology department will be taught entirely
online. Teaching assistants will be available to aid the students when
they have questions, but the courses will be self paced and entirely
online. As a faculty member of that institution, you have been asked
to help develop courseware for this program. What are the implications
of that request? How does this effect your own job security? What other
effects will there be and on whom? What arguments can you make for
or against the program?
Students would then reply to this question and the thread would develop. |
Teaching Strategies:
What are some tips to help the lesson run smoothly? A difficulty with hypothetical
situations is for the teacher to wait until the students counter-post for
or against an initial student analysis of the hypothetical. Instructor postings
tend to squash further development in the given hypothetical discussion thread.
Additionally, if this is the first hypothetical assignment (although the
example provided would probably be later in a class or workshop), a sample
posting might be given with a sample question in order to help students understand
expectations.
Finally, the instructor should have a detailed analysis of the given hypothetical
to help guide in analysis of the student responses. After the discussion
is over, the instructor can then post this analysis with possible references
to the arguments developed by the students so as to personalize the feedback.
Accommodations:
What accommodations may be needed for students with disabilities or other
special needs? This lesson requires few if any accommodations. Most text
to speech and speech to text programs can function within most asynchronous
discussion tools. The bandwidth requirements are also low.
Ideas for Activity Evaluation and Teacher Reflection:
How did the students like the lesson? End of semester evaluations should
ask about the usefulness and learning accomplished through such activities.
How was student learning verified? An assessment should be performed on
the quality of both the initial response by students, and any counter responses.
Furthermore, retention of the knowledge should be tested by students ability
to build on this knowledge with later units. Rubric development can be difficult
for hypothetical assignments such as this one, as there may not be a right
or wrong answer, and there can be many avenues which the students could develop
in their discussion. Any rubric should therefore be kept somewhat general.
Possible criteria in the rubric include: clarity, grammar, argument presentation,
analysis of a given number of factors, timeliness.
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