Thought Vectors and Nuggets
Difficulty: 4 (rated by author; 1=easy <--> 5=difficult)
Views: 3981
Module: Teacher for Learning
Find and make meaningful a “nugget.”
The Open Faculty Patchbook is a collection of lived experiences, “AHA!” moments & lots of helpful nuggets about teaching and learning. It’s been crafted like an old fashioned community quilt (each person contributes a square to make a beautiful large quilt), but has been given a 21st century makeover and is a compilation of insightful stories from postsecondary educators. One of the main goals of this activity is to get you to read carefully and respond imaginatively. Your work with “nuggets” should be both fun and in earnest. It should demonstrate your own deep engagement and stimulate deep engagement for your reader as well.
To do:
- Review The Faculty Patchbook, a robust collection of faculty authored overviews of specific pedagogical skills. Each entry is referred to as a “patch.”
- Select one patch that resonates with you.
- Select a passage from the patch that grabs you in some way and prepare to make that passage as meaningful as possible.
(It could be a passage that puzzles you, or intrigues you, or resonates strongly with you. It could be a passage you agree with, or one you disagree with. The idea here is that the passage evokes some kind of response in you, one that makes you want to work with the passage to make it just as meaningful as possible. A good length for your nugget is about a paragraph or so. Too much, and it becomes unwieldy. Too little, and you don’t have enough to work with.) - How do you make something as meaningful as possible? Well, use your imagination! You’ll probably start by copying and pasting the nugget into a doc. Or if you’re feeling very multimedia inclined, record yourself reading the nugget aloud and share your response as an audio file. From there, consider hyperlinks, illustrations, video clips, animated gifs, screenshots, whatever. Make the experience as rich and interesting as you can.
- After you make your submission, save the web address to your response (found in the green confirmation box) so you can use it later for your badge submission form.
This activity is part of the Metacognition section of the Teacher for Learning Module. It was borrowed from the course syllabus for Thought Vectors in Concept Space, designed by Dr. Gardner Campbell for an undergraduate research and writing course at Virginia Commonwealth University.