There are a number of content repositories for STEM learning activities available online. Unfortunately, navigating through those resources can be quite daunting. This course will provide guidance for navigation and selection of teaching resources in several of those repositories. The student will identify a topic currently being taught in one of their classes and will follow a guided path to identifying valuable activities that would enrich the students’ learning of that topic. The students will use provided templates to explore, evaluate, modify, and adapt activities that meet classroom needs. Students will make regular posts to a metacognitive journal throughout the course in order to track the steps of the process thus enabling them to continue enriching their courses with free useful content from online repositories. Focused discussion sessions will allow the students to process what they are learning and to share with others in the class.
Course Objectives:
At the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Effectively search and identify possible class activities in several free online STEM class activity repositories.
- Identify needs in existing classes for new classroom activities.
- Find several new activities that might meet the needs for his/her classroom.
- Evaluate identified activities and select one for adaptation for his/her classroom.
- Modify selected activity for his/her classroom as needed.
- Evaluate the adaptation and deliver the modified activity in his/her class.
- Self-evaluate the implementation of the activity.
- Review one other student’s modified activity.
- Record his/her personal experience and lessons learned in a metacognitive based journal.
- Teacher: Deborah Taylor