Tuesday, Nov.

8
From my Module 4 Electronic Journal its shown that I have already been active
within my professional community, having subscribed to the regular blog posts and
commenting and adding to discussion to a few of these. At this time however,
Faculty Focus does not offer an open unsolicited blog area for the community to
engage each other in, the means of communication simply is for discussion related
to the posted articles. I found this was not going to entirely meet my needs for the
Module 5 expectations, so I have begun to investigate other communities that might
provide a more open arena for discussion.

Wednesday, Nov. 9
In my continuing search, I decided to also enroll in the Teach Ontario community,
https://www.teachontario.ca/
This platform allows each individual to create their own blog space within the
community, as well as become members of like groups, create projects, open
discussions, etc. My strategy to engage the professional community will be to post
my output to a specific blog group, 21st Century Learning and Teaching, as well as
to my own Teach Ontario blog. In addition, when commenting to articles on Faculty
Focus I will also link my own PME Course blog where this output will also be posted,
and encourage people to visit and provide feedback.

Thursday, Nov. 10 Saturday, Nov. 12

During this time I crafted my output, determining to meet the output content
objectives, while still maintaining a short and interesting enough discussion to keep
people engaged, and peak their interest to encourage a response.
As stated above, the following output I have posted in four locations, my own
personal blog, links to this in Faculty Focus, and on the Teach Ontario 21 st Century
Learning and Teaching blog group, and finally to my own personal Teach Ontario
blog. Life decided this was enough work for today, Im happy its drafted, and Ill
post tomorrow morning.

Sunday, Nov. 13
The following is my Output that I posted to the above mentioned sites. Lets see if
anyone feels inclined to respond!
Hi, Im into my second year as a full-time college instructor after a few years of
part-time work, and am currently working on a Professional Master of Education
degree. Throughout my course-work and within my college setting, Im seeing the
trend in a transition from a traditional teacher-centred design towards more of a

learner-centred approach. Id like to share a couple of quick thoughts about this

and look to spark some dialogue surrounding any challenges or strategies anyone
has used during this transition.
Ive found a lot of influence in reading works by Elizabeth Vallance, Elliot Eisner, and
Ann Marie Hill. These authors have helped me understand the various Conceptions
and Philosophies of Education that drive the curricular designs, and demonstrate a
changing philosophy as designs trend towards a learner-centred approach. The
Realism philosophy which has been dominant incorporates conceptions of
Technology and Personal Success, which utilizes the teacher as a subject specialist,
is highly outcome based, and focuses on specifics. This is beginning to sway
towards a more Pragmatic philosophy with such conceptions as Self-Actualization
and Personal Commitment to Learning, where emphasis is put on both content and
process, and recognizes students as individuals.
My question surrounds this transition in practice. Has anyone been actively
involved in creating a more learner-centred curricular design, and what has this
looked like in your context, in terms of teaching style, activities, and assessment?
My current program involves both theory courses and practical labs. The theory
courses are still very much the teacher-driven lecture, classic of post-secondary
education, with groups of 30-65 students. Assessment consists of multiple choice
exams with a small selection of short-answer questions. Im looking for ideas to
make this experience more student-centred, but struggle with the number of
students and time constraints of grading evaluations beyond multiple choice
exams, or having to utilize class time for something more novel like oral interviews.
Faculty feel even more constrained by the fact that graduates must write a six hour
multiple choice test to become certified in their field, so we feel our job as faculty is
to prepare our students for this, so this is how we test.
Recently in our lab courses we have switched from high-stakes evaluations and
graded outcomes, to a pass/fail grade, as we try to motivate our students to a
degree of mastery and teamwork, and reduce the purely results/performance
driven attitude, and overall morale and student approval has improved as a result.
So again, both as a current student and teacher, what has been the experience in
other contexts? Has anyone had experience with this change, and are there any
strategies that might prove valuable for transitioning from the traditional lecture to
a student-driven design, while still maintaining a high level of course content?
Additionally, if anyone has any resources theyve found helpful geared towards this
design transition and would be eager to share, Id be most indebted!
Thanks!
-Jason.

Here is a link to my personal blog following my course work towards my PME.

http://jlanepme810.weebly.com/

Within the Faculty Focus community, an article was submitted Friday discussing the
use of Wikipedia as a novel assignment or assessment tool:
http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/wikipediaprojects-for-learning/
I posted the following reply to that article, with a link to my own blog should I peak
any interest to do so:
What an interesting and novel student experience! In addition to being a college
teacher, I'm currently pursuing a MEd. Part of this course work involves studying
current and changing philosophies and curricular design, which is particularly
pertinent as my college is actively working to become more student-centered, and
this Wikipedia assignment is a great example of what I could incorporate.
If anyone has interest to engage further, or has any outstanding resources to
further a learner-centred design, please check out my personal MEd course blog
and feel free to add to my discussion.
Thanks!
http://jlanepme810.weebly.com/