J. Ouellette | UBC-MET | ePortfolio
Course Reflection
ETEC 565AÂ | ARTIFACT THREE
No course is perfect, but, as educators, that's what keeps us humble and evolving. Thankfully, the MET program does give us a chance to provide our input after each course to listen to our input. This is the focus of artifact three.
By allowing room for student agency, in activities such as these, you break down barriers and build trust. You model that, you, too, make mistakes, respect the process of learning, are not perfect, and have a growth mindset. This translates into more motivated and engaged learners because they feel that they have a voice in terms of the direction in their learning.
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After clicking the image to reveal my reflections for this course, you can see that I was allowed the freedom to speak freely on where the course had its flaws, particularly in the way that the Moodle courses were authored and how some of the course activities were designed and how that impacted assessment.
(Ouellette, J., 2016d)
Some of the ways that I promote student agency in my classroom is allowing students to create the classroom rules (seen here in ETEC 512 | Article 2), letting them design what their classroom looks like, choice in what they want to inquire about and how they wish to display it, and giving them 20% time to freely inquire into their own ideas. I am also big on making sure they know the "why?" in anything they are learning. Lastly, I feel it is important that I am open to sharing my goals and life's pressures, so it promotes the message that they can do the same. It humanizes the relationship between me and my students, so we have mutual understanding, fairness, trust and leniency in expectations.