On a personal level, my older son started Driver's Ed today, so the question of when kids should make decisions on their own rather than work things through with adults seems particularly salient to me. (And my personal answer to the question is that he not get full autonomy till he is self-sufficient financially.)
In any event, I note that Prasanta's and Kim's students received very little direction from their instructors on their projects, but Walt gave some rather concrete direction to his students on what they should write about in their blog. So I wonder how the rest of you think through that and, in particular, if Walt felt a need to give out some instructions because he himself was new to blogging.
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2 comments:
Lanny and others - I gave the students specific questions to address in their blog for several reasons. They are sophomores or juniors in a science major. As such, they rarely, often never, are asked to write reflectively on their learning experiences. Giving some direction helped them in reflecting and to write about the kinds of things we were interested in learning from them. The direction given through these writing assignments was always very open ended.
My motivation in providing this guidance is to more fully understand how their international experience is affecting them. This type of blogging provides a means for students to share their reflections without penalty of a grade. It also allows them to cross-reference their own experiences and reflections on those experiences with their contemporaries and not just an instructor/mentor/teacher.
Walt
Here are some good questions to guide reflective writing:
What surprised me?
What intrigued me?
What disappointed me?
These come from Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater's excellent book for undergrads *Fieldworking*
Libbie
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