TCE 424, The Reflective Practitioner, will become a hybrid course this winter term 2013. This course is offered winter and spring term and has anywhere from 15-25 students. All the students are working towards earning their teaching license at the middle school or high school level. Students will be working on endorsements in any of the following: Social Studies, Language Arts, Family and Consumer Sciences, Health, Math or Science.
This class will meet every other week from 4-6:50 rather than every week. Most students are commuting from areas outside of Corvallis and this will reduce their time spent on the road as well give them more time in the classroom. The plan is to create the online portion of this class an integrated and essential part of the course that flows seamlessly with our face to face meetings. Time spent online will be used to submit required documents that demonstrate best teaching practices and reflecting on “What is good teaching?” in discussion boards.
In the Face to Face sessions, students will be having small and large group discussions about issues that arise in the student teaching experience and reflecting on how teachers can reach and motivate all students to learn. We will also be hearing from guest speakers in areas of interest to the students as they learn to be teachers and look for jobs. Almost all students will be graduating at the end of the term, and time will be spent discussing how to articulate and demonstrate their teaching experience and characteristics that will help them find that first job.
The online portion of this class will also include group discussion about reflective practice. Students will be leading discussions of their choice on issues that are influencing their teaching and their job search experience. Students will be posting their work for peer review and turning in documents required to demonstrate their teaching practices.
How do we make this online and face to face course seamless? Discussion from our online reflections will be brought into our face to face meetings for further review. Peer review done online will be discussed in class for further clarification and discussion. Guest speakers for the face to face portion may come from online discussion ideas. Websites and resources from the face to face portion will be shared online for more in depth learning. Some students are more interested in some areas than others and they will have the opportunity to take their research and reflection to a deeper level in the online portion of this course.
Your final paragraph is very effective in describing the ways you plan to integrate the classroom and online portions of your hybrid TCE 424. It will be quite interesting to see how that blending of the two environments works in practice when you offer the class for the first time during Winter term!