In response to pod 11’s Interactive Learning Resource: 

Thank you to group 11 for providing your learning resource. 

I think choosing public goods as a topic to introduce students to economics was very smart. Personally, I find economics can be an intimidating topic and as such the idea of an introductory course that touches on prevalent ideas in today’s society helps to break down barriers to entry. Your reasoning for choosing cognitivism was strong, I especially appreciated the note that the topic may be more easily picked up as topics may be mapped to examples seen in world news. After reading your rationale for the learning design I noticed you were incorporating a lot of different teaching methods, which I think is really smart. It sounds like the class will be really enjoyable! Especially by incorporating multiple discussions the learning experience in this class sounds very thorough.

Strengths

  • The topic of the course 
  • Variety of instructional methods 
  • Your learning outcomes are very clear and seem challenging yet achievable
  • Variety of formative assessments, I especially appreciate you having learners define and give examples of a topic. 
  • The organization of the resource underneath question 7, I like how the topic, activity, grade percentage, and resources were grouped together. If a learner is reading this they may easily understand what is to be done and what may be used to support their completing the activity. 
  • Defining pieces of the assessment plan. It was very helpful seeing the courses definition of participation etc. 
  • Defining the balance of requirements required for a class with ELL and single parent learners. It is noted how single parents will have less time and may save time not using resources intended to improve comprehension of English. 

Suggestions for improvement 

  • May make some adjustments in consideration to time
    • You mention administering exams (page 2) in your learning resource, considering time it may only be possible to include one exame and the rest may be for another course. 
    • One suggestion is to study one topic over multiple days, these study sessions may have to be compressed. 
  • May incorporate tables for organization of resources: topics put into a table etc. 
  • Some editing is required to remove grammatical errors. 

Questions

After reading your IRL I was curious about: 

  1. What is cooperative learning, what are some examples of it in a classroom? 
  2. How will feedback be provided to students as they progress through the course? 
  3. What is meant by learners “need to be corporate”?