Peer Reviews
In several classes I observed a trend with peer reviews where my fellow students would encourage one another and give "excellent" ratings on the reviews. Encouragement is a great thing and, in some cases, the students' work may have been excellent. However, I asked myself how it actually helped my peers. I understood that the peer reviews were generally intended for us to help each other. We were not giving each other final grades. I felt that I would best serve my fellow classmates by providing constructive feedback rather than simply giving all excellent ratings with a comment of "good job". The following is examples of some reviews I have given:
Example 1
Gerry,
Your stuff is looking good and it looks like you've made some good progress.
I read Laura's comments and she was very thorough, so I'm not sure if I can offer anything that she hasn't already told you. I'm trying to put her comments out of my mind as I review your document so I can hopefully offer a different perspective. I'm sorry if I duplicate what she's already said though.
Initially, your problem identification looks ok. You have a problem analysis, you declare your method, you explain the process, and then you describe the implementation.
I think you might have a big problem though as the focus is a bit off compared with your goals. The description in the problem identification seems to suggest that the learned needs to learn what a good breakfast is. The goals that would seem to come from that would be focused on educating the learner on eating healthy.
Your goals are listed as: Kitchen preparation, Safety, Stove Preparation
None of your goals deal with how to make pancakes or with how to educate the learner on healthy eating. You don't necessarily have to have choosing healthy food choices as a goal, but that does appear to be the major theme of your problem identification.
I would recommend that you elaborate more in your problem ID on how it is important to teach the learners how it is important that the learner need to know how to create pancakes. When you explained your decision for selecting this as your topic, you mentioned that you realized that you did not know how to make pancakes. Part of your problem identification could explain something about why kids should be taught this skill. You can also elaborate more about the importance that they know and understand safety when working in the kitchen.
You also need to reword your goals.
For example:
Students will know how to measure the correct amount of ingredients when making pancakes.
Students will understand the importance of practicing safety when working in the kitchen.
After you rewrite your goals, look for common goals that can be combined. For example, stove preparation and kitchen preparation could actually be one goal as they both deal with preparation. Dave gave me a comment on a previous checkpoint that I think helped me a lot.
"Goals are bigger than objectives." and "Objectives come from the goals."
(I'm paraphrasing him and hopefully I have it right)
You could have the goal:
Students will know how to prepare the kitchen and stove when making pancakes.
And then break it up with the objectives:
Given an unprepared kitchen, the learner will demonstrate knowledge of kitchen preparation by correctly laying out 7 out of 10 items needed to prepare pancakes.
That might not be a perfect objective, but I tried to make up one that has the key points of the maeger objective.
Given (something) , the learner will by (something)
Also check to make sure that you have one test item per objective, listed under each objective.
Your preinstructional strategy is good, but elaborate more why you didn't choose others. The overview would work well for your project, but I actually think an advanced organizer could also work very well too. That's for you to decide. The pages that talk about advanced organizers in our text is around 179-180.
I hope this helps
Feedback from Dr. Knowlton
Dr. Knowlton responded to my peer review on BlackBoard with the following comments:
"Benjamin is offering EXCELLENT advice that you all ought to double check in your project."
Example 2
Laura,
I'm extremely impressed with your project. Hopefully I can offer you some good advice as I go through it. The length has me wondering if my 11 page instructional document is way shorter than it should be. I'm missing a couple of sections still, but I don't think it'll increase by more than a few more pages.
One thing you definitely want to consider if you create another project like this is to scale down your images. This is something that won't affect your grade so it's moot for this project but I wish I'd spoken up sooner as it could have helped you and others with the uploads. Basically, the pictures that you pasted into the word document are full resolution and resized down. If you look at the image properties on some of them, you'll see they're displaying at a percentage of the full size. The image is still the full size though and makes your document very large. It's good to take those pictures into an image editor and scale them down. For scaling images, you can use something as simple as Microsoft Paint. Resize the image to a smaller size there, then paste or insert it into your Word document. That will make a huge impact on the file size of your document. Again, it's moot for this project now as it will me way too much work to go back and change, but it's good to know for future stuff.
Now for the evaluation that matters... :)
Problem Identification
You seem very thorough. Your method, process, implementation, and analysis all seem spot on. I'm pretty sure you'll get a 5.
Audience Definition / Learner Analysis
Everything in this section seems great. You might need more info in the general characteristics, but I could be wrong. Page 57 of our book says that "general characteristics are broad identifying variables such as gender, age, work, experience, education, and ethnicity." Obviously the task can be performed by either gender or any ethnicity. You highlight an interest and experience (which could potentially be listed as two bullets instead of one, but that may not matter). From what I understand, you're just defining the majority of your target audience. My guess is that the audience would be primarily teenage boys through adult men. Obviously women and girls could do the task as well, but the idea of defining the learner is simply to have a picture of the average learner as you create the instruction. Make sense?
The specific characteristics seem great as they define the requirements to get through the training.
Task / Content Analysis
Your analysis seems very detailed and thorough. You have relevant queues and have it organized in a way that is easily reference.
I realize now where I was getting confused as I see how the letters and numbers from the analysis are used to reference the objectives. I read it in the book and heard it on Dave's lecture, but for some reason that didn't seem to click until today. Thanks again for your comments on mine! But I digress...
Goals
Your goals are phrased great and I can see how they work with both the problem ID, task/content analysis, and objectives.
Objectives & Classification
Your objectives all seem to be complete Mager objectives. One question that I did see is regarding the criteria. I can't remember which post it was under exactly, but either on our exercise regarding objectives or in one of the previous checkpoints, Dave made a comment about including the degree of accuracy. (and this might be nit picking)
I'll randomly grab one of your objectives...
After reviewing the instructions, the learner will correctly refurbish the circuit board.
100% accuracy is implied and the text does mention that it is ok to leave that as implied, but I recall Dave making a comment that it's good practice to include the full criteria rather than leave it as implied. Then again, Dave's document on two models of instructional-performance objectives says that we are "not required to specify the criteria for your unit lessons developed..." You seem to have the performance and conditions, so that might be fine.
Your objectives also all seem to reference your content / task analysis, so I'd say you did very well overall on the objectives.
Instructional Strategies / Preinstructional Strategies / Assessment Strategy
Excellent!
Preinstructional Strategies
Your reasoning behind using an overview is explained very well and I agree with your rationale. I also have to say that reading your preinstructional analysis has given me more to think of for my own project.
Sequencing
Your sequencing is appropriate and well documented
Formative Evaluation
Looks great
Hopefully my feedback helps.