For the final project, I think I will develop a web-based learning experience around study skills, since I will be teaching a study skills and critical reading course to first semester college freshmen. Most of the students in the class have had some learning difficulties and they find studying tedious and unproductive. The challenge is to get them to use strategies that will lead to success in their courses. I believe this technology can add greatly to the internalizing of the strategies.
Unfortunately, most of the sites I've found so far could easily be done with paper and pencil.
This Quest Graden site http://questgarden.com/23/08/8/060419215421/process.htm links students to both word documents and other sites. For example, for note taking it links students to the Cornell U site which describes the Cornell Notetaking strategy, but for listening skills it merely takes students to a word document which describes listening skills. Another site, teacher web http://teacherweb.com/OH/Springfield-ClarkJVS/StudySkillsWebQuest/wqr3.aspx, also has a lot of study strategies on it. Unfortunately, the pages are boring (lots of text and not much else) and many of the links are things that one could do with paper and pencil. Finally, I found Mrs. Raimondi's webquest
http://teacherweb.com/NJ/MidlandSchool1/StudySkillsWebQuest/h3.aspx which asks students to create a poster to remind others to use a study skill for a particular strategy which they found useful. Again the site is a lot of text and not much else, but at least the final task requires students to evaluate and create.
It seems that the critical pieces here are the task and the evaluation pieces. I'd like to develop my study skills website so that the end product is one in which students see a real benefit. I want this to be an activity that they find useful rather than just more busy work. I am thinking of having them create a guide for incoming freshmen.
Suggestions are welcome!
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Are you thinking about using different Web 2.0 tools to facilitate a smoother study skills process? For example, you could use the highlighter in Diigo and/or Google Docs. You could also use a tool such as bubbl.us which is a graphic organizer that students can collaborate on. We will be looking at this on Tuesday.....maybe that will help!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing your learning experience for study skills. It sounds like it will be a good experience for your students. I wish that they had courses when I was younger - I probably could have used them. I will say that it has gotten easier as I have gotten older, but I can always use new ideas!
ReplyDeleteI do not envy you, that does not sound like a fun class, but it seems you are going about it the right way. You are doing everything you can to make it more interesting to the students. It will be important to keep these students interested and I think your website will do that.
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