Assignment Guidelines

Overview: This course is designed around three pillars of Learn, Make and Share. We learn and make in class, and the posts on this blog are evidence of this and are the ‘assignments’. We share with others in this course, and the world on a weekly basis.  You then respond with comments on at least two other students posts.

In addition, each student picks one week a semester to write a summary of what everyone has posted on the blog, and we publish that on this blog and on makerlab.illinois.edu. Since we have twenty one students and fifteen weeks, some students have options to pick a smaller learning activity and write about it.

We also aim to learn from others around the world, by leveraging social platforms such as twitter.

 

Weekly Individual Submissions: Weekly reflections or an assignment, usually setup on the weekly class and to be submitted on the blog by the Sunday following the session. Do review the class schedule to check what is due that week. In some cases the reflection might be structured to include a specific assignment, and in other cases it would be an open ended reflection, following the What/So What/ Now What template explained below. Do not use the prompts(What/So What/ Now What) in your submission, but write it as an essay.

  • What?
    Describe the experience; outline what happened that compelled you to think about and learn. The “what?” component of reflections may include the environmental factors, the conditions or background under which you have learned, the assumptions that you entered the situation with, a description of the experience itself, and the outcomes that occurred through the process. What did you do?
  • So What?
    Describe what difference it makes; outline what impact or meaning it has for you (or why it should matter to others). The “so what?” component of reflections may include relevant to you as an individual, the degree of importance that this knowledge has to practices in the “real world”, how the experience has changed you, and the ways in which this experience relates to you as a professional in your chosen field/major. So What? How is this learning important?
  • Now What?
    Describe what’s in store for the future, now that you’ve learned from this experience; outline what you are going to do to continue your professional development in light of this learning. The “now what?” component of reflections may include looking for future learning opportunities related to the one under consideration, mistakes that you are now prepared to avoid, situations that you are now prepared to take advantage of, an assessment of things that you as of yet do NOT know how to do but would like to, etc.Now What? What will you learn next?

Two Weekly Individual responses to respond on the blog posts from others in class, to acknowledge them, and share what you found interesting in their learning reflection.

Once in a semester activity: Decided based on your skills, or you do a weekly summary of the class activity, for a reader on the web, who has no knowledge about the class. This summary goes on our class website  and the MakerLab.illinois.edu blog (30,000 people a year will visit the blog!).  The writeup should provide a review of learning objectives, the activities done, skills learned, outputs achieved, things made etc. A summary of presentation from a guest speaker with links to their profile on the web, if relevant. Finally a summary of reflections from all the students, which would give the reader a good idea of what the students learned, observed, discovered. You could quote students , and/or link back to other student posts. You will also review the reflections of others, and the Twitter hashtag #digitalmaking, and/or do some basic research to find/share resources relevant to the weekly topic which will be aggregated on the resources page. Share resources on twitter(see activity below).

Twitter activity throughout the semester.(https://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking/twitter-as-a-pln/) and perhaps other ways of engaging with maker communities on the web

Individual Semester long Learning Project : Based on interests. (Need options from you by Feb 15th and a discussion with me and final decision by Feb 22th)