After taking the time to review our course syllabus and what we have accomplished over these 4 months, it was fun to see all we have had the opportunity to learn.  My awareness to didactic education has expanded immensely and I am grateful for that experience.  There is so much time and effort spent when creating a course and planning a learning environment for students which my awareness was heightened in the course.  I also learned that an instructors own sense of creativity permeates the foundation of the class.  Each module provided a chance to learn something new about a topic which I only knew from the perspective of a student.  I feel that I have a better foundation now for didactic teaching when presented with the opportunity.  In fact, this course was pivotal in guiding me through my first experience teaching a topic in a class period this semester to first year dental hygiene students.  I used the flipped classroom experience approach.  It was a great experience to have learned about the flipped classroom and to put it into practice with a group of students.  What I found most valuable about the experience was taking time to reflect after it occurred.  It was through this action I was able to see what worked in the two hours I had with the students and where I could improve.  One area I hope to work on is being a guide as students discuss topics in their individual groups and weaving it together as the discussion moves with the entire class.

As for what I hope to carry with me when I enter an academic career, the topics that were very helpful were the active learning modules, the syllabus module and assessment modules.  I liked being exposed to alternative methods for instruction.  It was fun to learn about alternative ways to engage students in the learning process.  An important concept I grasped was learning how to construct a syllabus and understanding the importance of alignment of course objectives and goals with assessments.  My confidence has grown in how to construct a course.  This, along with the exposure I have had to create an innovative classroom and alternative ways of instruction has given me a foundation in which to grow and strengthen as a future instructor.

I felt that the topic I most connected with was constructing a syllabus and the assessment assignments.  I don’t feel very strong in assessment design yet but understanding the importance of this step in the education process resonated with me.  Assessments and creating a syllabus felt like a puzzle that needed to be put together.  I enjoyed the process.

This course, I believe, will be a course that I will refer back to over and over again in a future academic career.  The information presented in our course text books has been a good resource for me and will continue to be for the future.  I have appreciated the feedback and reflections of those in my class from their own personal experience in education to their own reflection on what we have learned.  I look forward to seeing how other instructors incorporate and define innovative teaching in their classroom and I look forward to continuing to learn and to put into practice what this means to me.  Thank you for this foundation.

Throughout the last two semesters as we prepared materials for a course, created our syllabus and now created ways to assess students on their understanding of the material, I have found the following as the most challenging aspect.  It is making sure that the ways of assessment mirror the objectives of the course material and that the assessments help identify a student’s comprehensive understanding of the course material. The importance of this is so the course instructor can see the depth of knowledge a student has gained through the course.

In The Nurse Educator’s Guide to Assessing Learning Outcomes McDonald discusses the numerous ways in which an instructor tests student’s on comprehension of material.  Some of those ways include multiple choice questions, short answer and or essay questions, true/false exams and assessments that have rubrics for students to use as their guide in the assignment.  Each method takes time, planning well enough in advance to prepare for the task as well as reflection after the assessment is given to determine the validity of the assessment.  Writing assessments that mirror the objectives of the course is an important component.  The action word used in the objective is a clue to what types of assessments are appropriate.  This was a concept I did not have a grasp on until our exercise in our recent synchronous class.  A light bulb went off for me and I understand why the objectives needed to be written clearly and directly and how a properly structured class gives direction for the students throughout the course.

Another challenge I experienced as I was doing the assessment assignment was how difficult it can be to write a rubric.  I have worked with rubrics as a student and as a faculty member.  I love a rubric that is direct so students know how to achieve the most possible points as well as a rubric that helps faculty members be calibrated.   My initial thought was that it would be an easy task of constructing a rubric.  The challenge I had was the ability to show clear distinctions in the criteria section.  I began to write what I was looking for in a student to achieve all the points possible.  The next step I took was to determine what the product would look like if a student did not achieve any points on the assignment.  Now, I was left to figure out the criteria between the two extremes.  This was the tough part.  I kept reflecting on what I was writing to determine if it was clear and different from criteria in other scoring levels.  It was helpful to have another individual read the rubric to see if it was clear to them if they were to do the assignment.

As with preparing a presentation, lecture or incorporating a new approach to a learning environment in a classroom preparing assessments for students takes time, practice, reflection and dedication in achieving an excellent product.