Week 4, Response to Donita Massing

Donita Massing wrote regarding her AR Project:

I actually started writing an AR summary back in April before my second cycle of research was completed. The moment seized me and I felt like writing it down. The moment I'm referring to was a simultaneous success and defeating incident.
I chose to revel in the success! Namely that one of the students in my lab that was previously unmotivated by anything in the course suddenly became engrossed in the current project. He mostly stayed in that level of motivation and finished out the year by winning our portfolio show!

He invited me to his graduation celebration, which I am planning to attend. How could I miss it? The purpose of my research has really been about finding some way to motivate the unreachable ones. I realized that it varies so much for each person that it is difficult to find a single magic key to motivation. Through my data, I determined that the best course of action with regards to motivation was to address the multiple intelligences with every lesson (as much as possible.) As a result, I basically recreated my entire course. I have learned so much about effective teaching practices that I'm surprised that students learned anything before I started this AR project!

I have already posted my AR summary page, but I'm continually updating it and revising so that it best expresses the research. I found that it's difficult to put all of the experiences in writing! I'll be the first to admit that I didn't particularly care for the AR blog assignments we were given in each course, but now I am SO thankful for them. I had forgotten so much about the process that re-reading my posts was essential to realizing the results of the AR!

Kerry Marquis wrote:

Donita, I’m so glad that you are reveling in your success and the fact that you have recreated your course means that you have taken it to a totally new high as I’m sure you were an outstanding teacher before.

Your project being about finding a way to motivate your unreachable students parallels mine of reaching those teachers yet to incorporate technology into their teaching. And your realization that each is different also parallels my project. In mine, I actually surveyed to find what teachers would and would not do with technology in their classes. It was interesting; then I could design lessons for teachers to deliver that incorporated lots of what they would use and small amounts of the parts that they shied away from. I found much greater success with my successive lessons that I thought I would.

I wonder what would happen if you surveyed your students at the beginning as to what they liked or felt was useful to them or something along those lines. Not on current assignments or the class as it is – you’ve done great surveys on that – but what they actually find interesting in their lives or plan to do as adults. I wonder what would turn up?