Weekly Blog Post #1 Kyle Harman EDCI 336

Questions to Reflect Upon After Week 2

Question #1: Do we need to reimagine education?

I believe so yes. As seen in the video, I believe a lot of the emphasis on learning is placed on how much information students can retain for a test, rather than what they actually learned. Furthermore, I believe students are limited to show their knowledge and learning primarily through standardized testing. Instead I believe we (as educators) should make more use of multimodal forms of assessments that are personalized to the needs of individual students.

Question #2: What concerns you and/or excites you about this approach?

What excites me the most about this approach is I believe students will feel less pressure to memorize or retain information for tests that will impact their grades. Instead, students will have the ability to select a format of completing an assignment that best represents their learning needs. For example, instead of just writing a test at the end of unit, students will have the opportunity to pick another form of assessment such as a presentation, visual aid, essay etc… that best suits them and their learning needs.

Question #3: What obstacles do educators face when they try to change pedagogy?

I believe that one obstacle in which educators might face is a lack of support when proposing new pedagogy. For example, there might not be as much content or resources available for new pedagogy being introduced. And as a result, educators might be tasked with creating new curriculum/pedagogy. Secondly, I believe that educators might face pressure from other educators to not change pedagogy and instead keep older forms of pedagogy present.