At the beginning of last semester, I wrote about my plans to integrate a digital project into one of my upper-level courses. I provided an update at the end of October. This will be the final post in the series: a brief reflection on how it went.
As the semester began, my hope was that students would gain three things from the project:
- Some familiarity with the person whose work they personally explore, and an introduction to the work of those covered by their classmates
- Practice in teamwork and in project planning
- An introduction to technical skills that will be transferable (WordPress is just a vehicle; if students encounter difficulties with it, we’ll work together on strategies for solving them)
I noted in the October post that the site didn’t develop in the gradual way that I’d anticipated, mostly because I didn’t clearly communicate expectations about that to my students. The teamwork and project planning goal---for similar reasons---didn’t really work out as planned, either. The next time I have an assignment that involves a digital project, I’ll need to make expectations more explicit, both for myself and for the students.
Students did end the semester, though, with both the content and technical skills I’d hoped they’d gain, and I was happy with how the project turned out.
What about you? If you tried something new in one or more of your courses last term, how did it go? Let us know in the comments!
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by cogdog]