Assignments for EDEC 575 / COMP 598

Over the course of EDEC 575 / COMP 598, you will be asked to design, justify, and reflect upon a variety of different teaching artifacts used for teaching CS/CT to an audience of your choice. The different assignments build upon each other, so that you can get feedback on earlier stages before you begin later stages.
 

Assignment 1: Course Outline Design (In Groups)

Due: Start of class, Sept 18
Hand in: three documents (course outline, justification document, marking scheme), the group submits four identical hard copies (to be used for peer feedback)
Worth: 5% of final grade
Goal of the assignment: to design and justify a course outline for a CS or CS-adjacent course, which is both realistic and useful for its intended audience

In our Sept 11 class we will assemble into groups to design a course outline. The outline should be for a class on computer science, computational thinking, or contain a substantial CS/CT element. The members of the group will act as co-instructors of the fictional course.

The course outline should be designed to be offered in a particular institution (for university/college/CEGEP) or a particular school district (for primary/secondary), and aligned with the policies of that institution/district. No two groups may use the same institution or school district.

Along with the course outline your group will also hand in a 1-3 page document containing:
  1. an explicit statement of who the intended audience is for the course outline (students? parents? etc)
  2. description and justification of how you designed your course outline
  3. why your course outline has internal legitimacy (i.e. alignment with institutional/district policies)
  4. why your course outline has external legitimacy (e.g. alignment with accreditation standards, alignment with mandated curricula)
  5. how your design process relates to at least two of the four readings we have had as of Sept 11
  6. how your group worked together as a team
  7. what you learnt from the exercise and how you would do things differently if you could do it again

The third and final artifact to hand in is a marking rubric for your course outline and the justification document. Your marking rubric should add up to 100 points, with the following constraints:
Note: If you miss the Sept 11 class, you should complete this activity solo, or with other students who were absent that day. I recommend using Piazza to find other students to work with.

Assignment 2: Learning Goal Selection (In Groups)

Due: Start of class, Sept 25
Hand in: as hard copy, 4 identical copies: your group's learning goals, plan & justification, marking scheme
Worth: 5% of final grade
Goals: to identify PCK for your group's course, to select & coordinate what each member of your group will teach their demonstration lesson on

In the last assignment, we created groups formed each formed around a CS(-ish) course that they designed a course outline for. For the rest of term, your assignments will be based on that imaginary course. (Note: if you missed the Sept 11 class, you should join one of the larger groups for the rest of term.)

Near the end of term, you will individually give a short (10 minute) lesson intended to be an example lesson of your group's course, with 1-2 learning goals for the lesson. The purpose of this assignment is for you to identify which learning goal(s) your lesson will have, so that there is synergy with the other members of your group.

Your choice of learning goals should reflect pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about the material. For example, a lesson might target a common misconception, or target a topic that isn't obviously hard to students but is surprisingly difficult for them. I highly encourage you to talk to at least one person who has taught a course like the one your group is working on. I also highly encourage you to search the literature for any PCK research on your chosen content.

You are to submit as a group a 1-3 page document containing:
  1. A list of the learning goals you collectively will cover in your individual lessons
  2. The order your lessons will appear in
  3. A justification for why you collectively chose the learning goals and ordering that you did, including evidence for your justification (e.g. consulting educators, academic literature)
  4. What you learnt from this exercise and how you would do it differently if you could do it again

And with the document you should also submit a marking scheme for the document. You have the choice of grades being individual, collective, or a mix of the two. Your marking rubric should add up to 100 points, with the following constraints:


Assignment 3: Lesson Plan

Due: Start of class, Oct 2
Hand in: as hard copy, 4 copies
Worth: 5% of final grade
Goals: to design and justify a lesson plan

In the previous assignment you identified a topic for you to teach a 10 minute lesson on. In this assignment, your goal is to draft a lesson plan for your lesson.

You are to submit:
  1. A lesson plan.
  2. A 1-3 page justification for your lesson plan. Why did you plan the lesson the way you did? What are the trade-offs of your decisions? You should relate your justifications to the readings where appropriate.
  3. A marking rubric for your lesson plan.
Your marking rubric should add up to 100, with the following constraints:


Assignment 4: Quiz (In Groups)

Due: Start of class, Oct 16 Oct 23
Hand in: as hard copy, four copies
Worth: 7% of final grade (5% individual, 2% group)
Goals: to write a quiz question to assess student understanding of your demonstration lesson, to practice (semi-)collaborative quiz-writing

In Assignment 3, you developed a lesson plan for your demonstration lesson. In this assignment, you will develop a quiz that you and your group will administer to the class immediately after you and your group members perform your demonstration lessons. The amount of time allocated to the quiz will be 5 minutes per group member.

Each member of your group will independently write one quiz question and a marking scheme for your quiz question. Your quiz question may have multiple sub-questions. Your quiz question should be doable by a typical student in five minutes, and assess what you taught in your lesson. The marking scheme for your quiz question should be markable in under 2 minutes by a typical grader assessing a typical student.

Then, as a group you will merge your quiz questions into one quiz document, and the marking schemes into one quiz marking scheme document. As a group you should think over the order of questions. The quiz document should be formatted according to the protocols and norms of the institution in which your demonstration lesson is set. For example, some places will expect a cover page on a quiz, and may require that certain text be on the cover page.

As a group you will hand in:
  1. The quiz packet
  2. The quiz marking scheme packet
  3. A justification document which contains:
    1. A clear mapping of which group member is responsible for which quiz question
    2. Each group member's individual justification for their quiz question & quiz marking scheme
    3. The group's justification for the ordering of quiz questions and formatting of the entire document & marking scheme for this assignment
  4. A marking scheme for this assignment (note: each member will receive a different grade, but the same marking scheme will be used for all group members)
As you will be deploying your quiz when you give your demonstration lesson, this assignment gives you a chance to get feedback on your quiz and revise it before you administer the quiz.

Your marking rubric should add up to 70, with the following constraints:

Assignment 5: Lesson

Due: Nov 6 or 13 depending on group
Hand in: 15 copies of your group's quiz packet
Worth: 15% of final grade
Goals: to teach a short lesson

You and your group will have five minutes to introduce what your group is doing and what background/context the class should know for your group's lessons. During this time, or beforehand, you should each write your learning goals on one of the whiteboards in the room.

You'll then have 10 minutes each to teach your demonstration lesson. The lesson will be videotaped for you and Elizabeth to review afterwards.

After everybody in your group presents, you'll administer a quiz to the class on your lessons.

Your peers will give you feedback on your lesson: what went well, and what could be improved.

You'll be marked by Elizabeth out of 100 on:

Assignment 6: Teaching Log

Due: start of class, the week after you teach your mini-lesson
Hand in: one hard copy
Worth: 5% of final grade
Goals: to practice maintaining a teaching log

In assignment 5, you taught a 10 minute lesson, and then co-administered a quiz to assess learning of your lesson. An important practice in teaching is to keep a log of your teaching activity: how did your lesson go? What would you do next time?

These logs are especially useful if you teach the same content again, and are best written while the experience is fresh in your head. Since Assignment 8 is to produce a report on your lesson experience, I am asking you to submit a teaching log one week after you teach your lesson, to ensure you write down your experience while it is fresh in your mind. (Some example teaching logs are on Piazza)

Your log entry will only be read by me (Elizabeth). It should address:

Assignment 7: Marking

Due: end of class, Nov 20
Hand in: one hard copy
Worth: 3% of final grade
Goals: to practice marking, to practice managing a TA/grader, to reflect upon the marking process

In assignment 5, you gave a quiz to the class. In this assignment we will mark this quiz. This assignment will be completed entirely during class time on Nov 20.

In your groups, you will pick a group-mate to be your grader for the quiz question that you were responsible for in A5. You will then manage them as they grade the quiz for you. After they finish grading the quiz question for you, you will write a short reflection about the experience: what you expected / didn't expect, what you learnt, what you would do differently next time, etc.

At the same time, one of your group-mates will be doing the same to you: you will be grading their quiz question. As you mark their quiz question, you will annotate and amend their quiz marking scheme, and then at the end write comments about your observations and feedback for them.

You will hand in two items:

Assignment 8: Lesson Report

Due: "Dec 4", but I within reason will give any and all requests for extension (e.g. not due in the summer) - note that any requests past the end of term will require a K contract
Hand in: one hard copy in my mailbox at the School of Computer Science office in McConnell
Worth: 50% of final grade
Goals: to reflect upon all the prior assignments, to synthesize the prior assignments, to evaluate your own teaching and learning about teaching, to synthesize the readings and vocabulary from this class with your assignments, to enumerate and assess your design decisions

You are to submit a report about the teaching experience you developed through this class, with the following sections:
  1. Introduction (max 2 pages, min 1 page)
  2. Course context (max 1 page, min 1/2 page)
  3. Lesson (max 2 pages, min 1 page)
  4. Quiz (max 2 pages, min 1/2 page)
  5. Design Decisions (max 6 pages, min 3 pages)
  6. Reflection (max 4 pages, min 2 pages)
  7. Discussion (max 4 pages, min 2 pages)
  8. Conclusion (max 1 page, min 1/4 page)
  9. References
  10. Appendices
    1. lesson plan (sans justification document or marking scheme)
    2. quiz question (sans justification document or marking scheme)
    3. quiz question's marking scheme (sans justification document or meta-marking scheme)

Without appendices or references, your report should be 10-16 pages. Including references and appendices, your report should be at most 20 pages. I will not read anything past 20 pages.

In your report, you should additionally:

Your template must have on each page the page number along with the total number of pages, e.g. (2 / 15). The appendices should be included in the page count and should have page numbers on them.