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:

  1. Review The Faculty Patchbook, a robust collection of faculty authored overviews of specific pedagogical skills. Each entry is referred to as a “patch.”
  2. Select one patch that resonates with you.
  3. 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.)
  4. 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. 
  5. 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.

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225 Responses for this Activity

  • Response to the
    by Aaron Goldt (@agoldt)

    I chose to read patch 26 – the secret ingredients of mentoring. When reading this passage I was hoping it would pass on some simple small secrets that would accelerate my growth as a mentor to my students. Instead I was confronted with three main themes: Feeding the brain, Cultivating the heart, and building courage. more… »

  • Thought Vectors and Nuggets
    by Adam Zalewski (@azalewski)

    I chose PATCH THIRTY FIVE – THE GHOST OF QUESTIONS NOT ASKED  The paragraph that resonated with me was   “I’m going way over 25 sentences by digging in to that anecdote. My point is that I did not anticipate, at all, that this idea of learning via a game would resonate so poorly with these more… »

  • THOUGHT VECTORS AND NUGGETS – TAKEN FROM PATCH 23: (UN) PREPARED
    by Dora Tsang (@tsando)

    “It seems no matter how long I work at this, how many students I shepherd through a school year’s worth of physical education, I never, ever feel well prepared.” … “My little heap of doubt is resilient, reliable and robust. Teaspoon sized today, boulder heavy the next, my heap can grow or shrink as the more… »

  • Nuggets = Pasta = Radiation Therapy?
    by Rahul Mohla (@rmohla)

    “For me it’s about context. I teach fully online courses, so students access resources and communications when it’s convenient to them each week of the course. I’ve used a mix of text, audio, and video to convey concepts and provide feedback, but when it comes to weekly engagement with one another, my activities kinda stink.” more… »

  • PATCH ONE: INTERPRETING STUDENT WORK
    by Phillip McGregor (@PMcGregor)

    Taken from PATCH ONE: INTERPRETING STUDENT WORK “One important theme that emerges from discussion is always the goal of the labs themselves. What do we want students to learn? What are the transferable skills that we want students to take away?” This section got me thinking, what did I learn and take away from all more… »

  • Thought vectors and nuggets – Patch 21
    by Sam Gennidakis (@SGennidakis)

    Patch #21: Just listen:  Empathy and Science Pedagogy.  Chuck Pearson, Tusculum College, Tennessee (July 20, 2017) (https://openfacultypatchbook.org/classroom-skill/patch-twentyone-just-listen/ ) Passage: “The goal is not for the student to mimic your own explanation; the goal is for the student to arrive at their own accurate explanation. That’s not something that happens without intention. That’s something you can more… »

  • Patch 29 – Small Win Parties
    by anh lam (@anhlam)

    From Patch 29 MY 25¢ Worth for instructional designers: “Small win parties – okay maybe a party for one, but it’s important to do a quiet victory dance every time one of your ideas comes to fruition, especially if you had to go to the mat for it.” We all juggle multiple projects on a more… »

  • Thought Vectors and Nugget
    by Lucas Prestes (@Lucas Plautz Prestes)

    My nugget references an excerpt from “Patch thirty two – Is everyone an instructional designer?”. See the original text here: https://openfacultypatchbook.org/instructional-design/patch-thirty-two-is-everyone-an-instructional-designer/ Audio Transcription Reflecting on change, choice and innovation leads us to consider the complexity inherent in these processes. Change is a manifestation of freedom of choice, an act of agency that can trigger transformations more… »

  • PATCH 3 – SHEETS AIN’T CHEATS
    by winton cape (@winton)

    That is the patch I looked at. I fully agree with the author completely. With the emergence of AI, I believe that this spells the death of memorization. It is kinda what the calculator did to the multiplication tables that I route learned and the age of 9. That is the patch I looked at. more… »

  • Thought vectors and nuggets
    by Afshan Jabeen (@ajabeen)

    This is in response to patch one–Interpreting student work.

    2 Resources for this Activity

    • Find your Ikigai
      shared by Lisa Macdonald (@Lisa)

      Nugget: “Ikigai is the sweet spot where your passion meets your mission, your vocation, and your profession. It’s the place where you find joy, fulfillment, and a deep sense of purpose. Discovering your Ikigai is like uncovering the treasure map to a life of meaning and contentment.”

    • What’s a Nugget? (Thought Vectors in Concept Space Syllabus)
      shared by Ontario Extend (@ontario-extend)

      See how this open networked course used the idea of a “nugget” as a strategy for concept understanding, and how it was used in this undergraduate research course at Virginia Commonwealth University

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